Objective:To investigate the application value of machine learning algorithms for gauze detection in laparoscopic pancreatic surgery.Methods:The retrospective and descriptive study was conducted. The 80 intact laparoscopic pancreatic surgery videos from Peking Union Medical College Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences with timing of July 2017 to July 2020 were collected. The training set was used to train the neural network, and the test set was used to test the ability of neural network for gauze detection under different difficulties. Under the supervision of two superior doctors, videos that containing gauze were selected and classified according to recognition difficulty into three difficulty level including easy, normal and hard difficulty, and further divided based on random number method into training set with 61 videos and test set with 19 videos in a ratio of 3:1 roughly. The minimum enclosing rectangle of the gauze were marked frame by frame. All images were input to the neural network model for training after normalization and preprocessing. For every image, the output of neural network is the predicted minimum enclosing rectangle of gauze. The intersection over union >0.5 was identified as positive result. Observation indicators: (1) video annotation and classification; (2) test outcomes of neural network for test set.Count data were represented as absolute numbers or percentages.Results:(1) Video annotation and classification: a total of 26 893 frames of images form 80 videos were annotated, with 61 videos including 22 564 frames of images as the training set and 19 videos including 4 329 frames of images as the test set. Of the training set, 19 videos including 5 791 frames of images were classifed as easy difficulty, 38 videos including 15 771 frames of images were classifed as normal difficulty, 4 videos including 1 002 frames of images were classifed as hard difficulty, respectively. Of the test set, 4 videos including 1 684 frames of images were classifed as easy difficulty, 6 videos including 1 016 frames of images were classifed as normal difficulty, 9 videos including 1 629 frames of images were classifed as hard difficulty, respectively. (2) Test outcomes of neural network for test set: the overall sensitivity and accuracy of gauze detection by neural network in the test set were 78.471%(3 397/4 329) and 69.811%(3 397/4 866), respectively. The sensitivity and accuracy of gauze detection by neural network were 94.478%(1 591/1 684) and 83.168%(1 591/1 913) in easy difficulty test set. The sensitivity and accuracy of gauze detection by neural network were 80.413%(817/1 016) and 70.859%(817/1 153) in normal difficulty test set, 60.712%(989/1 629) and 54.944%(989/1 800)in hard difficulty test set. The frame rate reached more than or equally to 15 fps. The overall false negative rate and false positive rate of gauze detection by neural network in the test set were 21.529%(932/4 329) and 30.189%(1 469/4 866), respectively. The false negative was mainly due to the existence of blurred images, too small gauze exposure or blood immersion of gauze. The false positive was caused by the reflection of connective tissue or body fluids.Conclusion:The machine learning algorithms for gauze detection in laparoscopic pancreatic surgery is feasible, which could help medical staff identify gauze.