Short Biography

I am PostDoctoral Research Fellow at the Advanced Robotics and Computationally AugmenteD Environments (ARCADE) Lab, lead by Dr. Mathias Unberath, at the Department of Computer Science, The Johns Hopkins University. I received my PhD from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, supervised by Dr. Ren Hongliang and mentored by Dr. Mobarakol Islam. My other educational background includes a Bachelor's degree (Hons) in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore, as well as a Diploma in Mechatronics from Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore.

My research interests include artificial intelligence and its applications in robotic surgery. My current research topics include:

• Scene understanding in robotic surgery - semantic segmentation, surgical scene graph, surgical data science, and surgical action & phase recognition.
• Natural language processing in robotic surgery - surgical visual question answering and surgical scene captioning.

News Feeds

Key Publications

(* Co-first author)

SurgicalGPT: End-to-End
Language-Vision GPT for Visual
Question Answering in Surgery.
Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, Mobarakol Islam*,
Gokul Kannan and Hongliang Ren.
Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted
Intervention (MICCAI), 2023.
[preprint] [code (will be made available soon)]

Surgical-VQA: Visual Question
Answering in Surgical Scenes
Using Transformer.
Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, Mobarakol Islam*,
Adithya K. Krishna and Hongliang Ren.
Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted
Intervention (MICCAI), 2022.
[preprint] [code] [poster] [video]

Global-Reasoned Multi-Task
Learning Model for Surgical
Scene Understanding.
Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, Sai Mitheran*,
Mobarakol Islam and Hongliang Ren.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters & IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation (RA-L & ICRA), 2022.
[preprint][code] [poster] [video]

Rethinking Feature Extraction: Gradient-Based
Localized Feature Extraction for
End-To-End Surgical Downstream Tasks.
Winnie Pang*, Mobarakol Islam*, Sai Mitheran, Lalithkumar
Seenivasan, Mengya Xu and Hongliang Ren.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters & IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation (RA-L & ICRA), 2023.
[preprint] [code] [video]

Learning and Reasoning with
the Graph Structure Representation
in Robotic Surgery.
Mobarakol Islam, Lalithkumar Seenivasan,
Lim Chwee Ming and Hongliang Ren.
Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted
Intervention (MICCAI), 2020.
[preprint][code]

Surgical-VQLA: Transformer with Gated
Vision-Language Embedding for Visual Question
Localized-Answering in Robotic Surgery.
Long Bai*, Mobarakol Islam*,
Lalithkumar Seenivasan and Hongliang Ren.
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA), 2023.
[preprint] [code]

Dataset Release

Academic Awards

Outstanding Reviewer
Award

International Conference on Medical
Image Computing and Computer
Assisted Intervention 2023

STudent-Author Registration
(STAR) Awards

International Conference on Medical
Image Computing and Computer
Assisted Intervention 2023

Outstanding Undergraduate
Researcher Prize

National University of Singapore
AY2017/2018

FoE 32nd INNOVATION
& RESEARCH AWARD

National University of Singapore
2018

Singapore Manufacturing
Federation Metal,
Machinery & Engineering
Industry Group Project Prize

Temasek Polytechnic
2013

Commendation Award
for Major Project

Temasek Polytechnic
2013

Key Talks and Presentations

Gradient-Based Localized Feature
Extraction for End-To-End
Surgical Downstream Tasks

IEEE International Conference on Robotics
and Automation, London, May. 2023. [video]

Relational Reasoning in VQA Models
for Visual Question Answering
in Robotic Surgery

ICRA 2023 Workshop:Surgical Robotics
London, Msy. 2023.

Surgical-VQA: Visual Question Answering
in Surgical Scenes Using Transformer

Medical Image Computing and Computer-
Assisted Intervention (MICCAI)
Singapore, Sep. 2022. [video]

CLEARNESS: Cross-scaLe tEmporAl
gRaph NEtwork for Super-reSolutions

IUPESM WORLD CONGRESS ON MEDICAL
PHYSICS AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
Singapore, Jun. 2022.

Global-Reasoned Multi-Task Learning
Model for Surgical Scene Understanding

IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation
Philadelphia, May. 2022. [video]

Academic Services

Program Committee

DART Workshop, Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2022.

Reviewer

Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2023)
IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (2023)
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2023)
DART Workshop, Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (2022)
IEEE Sensors Journal (2022)

© Seenivasan Lalithkumar | Last updated: Feb 2024

Conference and Journal Publications

SurgicalGPT: End-to-End Language-Vision GPT for Visual Question Answering in Surgery. Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, Mobarakol Islam*, Gokul Kannan and Hongliang Ren. Medical Image Computing and Computer- Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2023.

[preprint] [code (will be made available soon)]

Surgical-VQLA: Transformer with Gated Vision-Language Embedding for Visual Question Localized-Answering in Robotic Surgery. Long Bai*, Mobarakol Islam*, Lalithkumar Seenivasan and Hongliang Ren. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023.

[preprint] [code]

Paced-Curriculum Distillation with Prediction and Label Uncertainty for Image Segmentation. Mobarakol Islam*, Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, SP Sharan, VK Viekash, Bhavesh Gupta, Ben Glocker and Hongliang Ren. International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (IJCARS), 2023.

[preprint] [code]

Task-aware asynchronous multi-task model with class incremental contrastive learning for surgical scene understanding. Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Mobarakol Islam, Mengya Xu, Chwee Ming Lim and Hongliang Ren. International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (IJCARS), 2023.

[preprint] [code]

Rethinking Feature Extraction: Gradient- Based Localized Feature Extraction for End-To-End Surgical Downstream Tasks. Winnie Pang*, Mobarakol Islam*, Sai Mitheran, Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Mengya Xu and Hongliang Ren. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters & IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (RA-L & ICRA), 2023.

[preprint] [code] [video]

Surgical-VQA: Visual Question Answering in Surgical Scenes Using Transformer. Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, Mobarakol Islam*, Adithya K. Krishna and Hongliang Ren. Medical Image Computing and Computer- Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2022.

[preprint] [code] [poster] [video]

Biomimetic Incremental Domain Generalization with a Graph Network for Surgical Scene Understanding. Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Mobarakol Islam, Chi-Fai Ng, Chwee Ming Lim and Hongliang Ren. MDPI Biomimetics Journal (Biomimetics), 2022.

[preprint] [code]

Global-Reasoned Multi-Task Learning Model for Surgical Scene Understanding. Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, Sai Mitheran*, Mobarakol Islam and Hongliang Ren. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters & IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (RA-L & ICRA), 2022.

[preprint][code] [poster] [video]

PEg TRAnsfer Workflow Recognition Challenge Report: Do Multi-Modal Data Improve Recognition?. Arnaud Huaulmé, et. al, ...... Lalithkumar Seenivasan and Pierre Jannin. EndoVis21 Challenge, Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (Challenge, MICCAI), 2021.

[preprint]

CholecTriplet2021: A benchmark challenge for surgical action triplet recognition. Chinedu Innocent Nwoye, et. al, ...... Lalithkumar Seenivasan and Nicolas Padoy. EndoVis21 Challenge, Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (Challenge, MICCAI), 2021.

[preprint]

Class-Distribution-Aware Calibration for Long-Tailed Visual Recognition. Mobarakol Islam, Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Hongliang Ren and Ben Glocker. UDL Workshop, International Conference on Machine Learning (UDL , ICML), 2021.

[preprint]

ScoopNet: 6DOF Pose Estimation pipeline for Origami-inspired Worm Robots. Rohit Lal, Ruphan Swaminathan, Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Liang Qiu and Hongliang Ren. IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), 2021.

[preprint] [code]

Shape Tracking of Flexible Morphing Matters From Depth Images. Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Fan Bai, Ming Ji, Xiaoyi Gu, Zion Tsz Ho Tse and Hongliang Ren. IEEE Sensors Journal, 2021.

[preprint]

Stent Deployment Detection Using Radio Frequency-Based Sensor and Convolutional Neural Networks. Mengya Xu*, Lalithkumar Seenivasan*, Leonard Leong Litt Yeo and Hongliang Ren. Advanced Intelligent Systems ( Adv. Intell. Syst.), 2020.

[preprint] [code]

Learning and Reasoning with the Graph Structure Representation in Robotic Surgery. Mobarakol Islam, Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Lim Chwee Ming and Hongliang Ren. Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI), 2020.

[preprint] [code]

Pilot Study and Design Conceptualization for a Slim Single-port Surgical Manipulator with Spring Backbones and Catheter-size Channels. Hongliang Ren, Cai Xin Chen, Catherine Cai, Krishna Ramachandra and Lalithkumar Seenivasan. IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation (ICIA), 2017.

[preprint]

Book Publications

Untethered Soft Ferromagnetic Quad-Jaws Cootie Catcher with Selectively Coupled Degrees of Freedom. Xinchen Cai, Catherine Jiayi Cai, Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Zion Tse and Hongliang Ren. Deployable Multimodal Machine Intelligence: Applications in Biomedical Engineering, Springer Nature Singapore, 2023.

[preprint]

Tendon routing and anchoring for cable- driven single-port surgical manipulators with spring backbones and luminal constraints. Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Xinchen Cai, Krishna Ramachandra, Francis Wong and Hongliang Ren. Flexible Robotics in Medicine: A Design Journey of Motion Generation Mechanisms and Biorobotic System Development, Academic Press, 2020.

[preprint]

Tunable stiffness using negative Poisson's ratio toward load-bearing continuum tubular mechanisms in medical robotics. Krishna Ramachandra, Catherine Jiayi Cai, Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Xinchen Cai, Zion Tszho Tse and Hongliang Ren. Control Theory in Biomedical Engineering, Academic Press, 2020.

[preprint]

© Seenivasan Lalithkumar | Last updated: July 2023

Undergraduate Projects

Boa-IV: Image-Guided Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery

Our team conceptualized and designed a novel tendon-driven actuation mechanism for stem actuation of catheter-size spring-backbone manipulators. Using this novel concept, we are also able to miniaturize surgical tools to a diameter of 2-3m that can be manipulated to perform surgical actions. The miniaturized surgical tools can be deployed through a single-port flexible manipulator, which has an overall shaft diameter of 8-12 mm.

Minimum Viable Product

Slave (Forcepts and electrocautery) Control Demo

Related Papers

Pilot Study and Design Conceptualization for a Slim Single-port Surgical Manipulator with Spring Backbones and Catheter-size Channels.

Hongliang Ren, Cai Xin Chen, Catherine Cai, Krishna Ramachandra and Lalithkumar Seenivasan.
IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation (ICIA), 2017.

Tendon routing and anchoring for cable-driven single-port surgical manipulators with spring backbones and luminal constraints.

Lalithkumar Seenivasan, Xinchen Cai, Krishna Ramachandra, Francis Wong and Hongliang Ren.
Flexible Robotics in Medicine: A Design Journey of Motion Generation Mechanisms and Biorobotic System Development, Academic Press, 2020.

Diploma Projects

TechX Challenge 2013, Singapore

I was part of the Temasek Polytechnic team in the TechX 2013 National Robotic Competition organized by the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA), Singapore . The competition comprised 6 challenges, where, the robots were assessed on their ability to autonomously navigate challenging terrains to conduct search and rescue missions and simultaneously relay information to base station in real-time. Our team managed to pass the qualification round and qualified for the grand finals.

Robot and Challenge Simulation

Obstacle Avoidance

Staircase Climbing

Pan Scan

© Seenivasan Lalithkumar | Last updated: Feb 2024

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