This Russian AI Builds a 3D Kidney in Minutes — and It’s Already in Use

In an operating room, every second matters. Now, thanks to a team of Russian medical technologists, surgeons performing kidney operations may soon have a powerful new ally — artificial intelligence that literally knows your anatomy inside and out.

Developed by Sechenov University, Sechenov.AI_nephro is being hailed as Russia’s first AI-driven surgical planning platform for kidney operations. It's already been tested in clinical settings across Russia and Belarus, assisting in the treatment of over 400 patients — and earning high praise from physicians for its speed, precision, and ease of use.

Here’s what it does: Upload patient data into the platform, and within minutes, the system generates a high-fidelity 3D model of the kidney, complete with blood vessels, ureters, tumors, cysts — all rendered in surgical detail. What used to take 24+ hours of manual imaging and modeling is now automated by machine learning.

For surgeons tackling complex kidney tumors or preparing for delicate transplants, this isn’t just a helpful tool — it’s a digital assistant that sees more, faster.

Earlier approaches relied on stitching together dozens of scans by hand. Now, Sechenov.AI_nephro handles it on the fly through a web-based interface. And the system’s just getting started. Future upgrades will enable automated tumor classification, and researchers are already testing applications in bladder cancer diagnostics and organ transplantation workflows.

Russia may not be first to market with surgical AI — but it’s quickly carving out a niche: precision, autonomy, and deep anatomical modeling at scale. And when the organ in question is as complex as a kidney, those details can mean everything.