Imagine practising a surgery on a virtual version of your body before doctors operate on the real you. That’s not science fiction anymore; it’s happening in India. As quoted by TOI, senior heart transplant surgeon Dr K R Balakrishnan now makes a stop at IIT Madras before performing surgeries on complicated heart patients.
At the biomedical engineering lab, he works on 3D virtual versions of his patients, also called digital twins. These twins help the doctor and his team analyse blood vessels, muscles and more before deciding the best course of treatment.
What Exactly Is a Digital Twin?
A digital twin is a computer-based copy of a real-world object or human. It receives real-time data from its original source, helping doctors make accurate medical decisions. The concept first appeared in aerospace engineering, but now it’s being used in hospitals too.Using sensors and medical test results, doctors can create a virtual model of a patient and try out different surgeries or treatments before doing anything to the actual patient.
Professor R Krishnakumar, who used to design digital twins for tyre companies, now heads the biomedical engineering lab at IIT-M. Quoted by TOI, he said, “Give us the medical records of a patient, and his digital twin will be ready in 45 minutes. An hour later, doctors can test treatment options on this synthetic patient.”
Sometimes, doctors don’t need a full 3D model, a simple graph can help them decide if the patient needs a life-saving device like an intra-aortic balloon pump. According to Krishnakumar, “Nine times out of ten, the system’s decision has been right.”
How Surgeons Use Digital Twins
Surgeons at JIPMER (Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research) in Puducherry are also working with digital twins. They’ve created 3D models of the brain to plan surgeries for deep-seated tumours.
Neurosurgeon Dr M S Gopalakrishnan, quoted by TOI, said, “We rehearse surgeries virtually and choose the safest and most effective method before operating.” These rehearsals are done using virtual reality (VR), which helps doctors practise every move and avoid risky areas.
Once the plan is ready, it’s loaded into a computer-guided system that helps during the real surgery by overlaying the virtual route onto the real-time view of the brain using augmented reality (AR).
What’s Next in Digital Twin Tech?
According to Dr Gopalakrishnan, the next step is for digital twins to give feedback during live surgery. “If I move a patient’s brain lobe in the operating room, the virtual twin should tell me what could happen next,” he said.
This level of smart interaction may soon be possible using Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINN). These allow the twins to be smarter and more accurate, even when data is limited or biological processes are complex.
Beyond Surgery: Managing Chronic Illnesses
Digital twins aren’t just for surgery. In cancer care, doctors use them to test treatments and reduce side effects. In diabetes, they help track sugar levels and suggest lifestyle changes that can even reverse the disease.
Dr Arjun Suresh, a general medicine expert, quoted by TOI, said, “Right now, we treat sugar levels reactively. With digital twins and real-time data from glucose monitors, we can be proactive.”
A team led by Dr Rajan Ravichandran is also working on using digital twins to predict kidney problems in diabetic patients.
A New Era of Drug Discovery
Digital twins are also helping in drug development. They make it possible to run virtual clinical trials and test drug reactions without using real humans. This saves time and money.
Some Challenges Still Remain
Though the technology is promising, doctors admit it’s not perfect. Dr Balakrishnan said, “There are still issues with data quality, how we use the models, and training people to use them well. Plus, there are ethical concerns about how much influence these tools should have on treatment decisions.”
Still, as digital twins grow smarter and more accessible, they may become a routine part of treatment, guiding doctors, saving lives, and making medicine more precise than ever before.
Inputs from TOI
