This study examines how DeepSeek models perform in complex surgical environments, testing their ability to understand and interact with robotic surgery scenarios.

• Evaluates performance on surgical instrument recognition, visual question answering, and detailed scene description tasks
• Tests DeepSeek's reasoning capabilities in interpreting real surgical environments
• Provides insights into AI's potential to enhance surgical precision and decision-making
• Establishes benchmarks for vision-language understanding in medical contexts

This research is significant for advancing AI integration in surgical systems, potentially improving patient outcomes through more intelligent computer-assisted surgical platforms.

Can DeepSeek Reason Like a Surgeon? An Empirical Evaluation for Vision-Language Understanding in Robotic-Assisted Surgery