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AI has been heralded as a difference maker in modern medicine, with many people optimistic about its abilities to assist in finding more effective, less harmful treatments for kids with brain cancer.
At The Kids’ Cancer Project, one Col Reynolds Fellow is already utilising it to make brain surgery safer. It’s the kind of research that benefits from events like Pirate Day.
Dr Joseph Yang, a Melbourne-based researcher from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, is currently developing an AI-powered tool to make brain tumour surgery safer for children by improving how surgeons map the brain’s important nerve fibre pathways before an operation.
Accurate mapping of the functional regions of the brain and the pathways that connect them are essential to avoiding brain damage while performing surgery. Tractography helps to make these pathways visible, but creating accurate tractography maps is complex. It takes specialist knowledge of the brain, which takes a lot of time. The issue currently is that existing tractography tools used to guide surgery can be unreliable near tumours, where accuracy matters most.
“One of the biggest questions is how we can remove tumours safely while protecting the parts of a child’s brain that control movement, speech, and thinking. Children’s brains are still developing, so even small changes can have lifelong effects,” says Dr Yang.
“Finding better ways to plan surgery safely is one of the most important challenges in treating brain cancer.”
Boasting over a decade of paediatric neurosurgical experience and personally developed one of the world’s largest clinical tractography datasets for children, Dr Yang aims to create a faster, more accurate and child-specific solution for surgical tractography that reflects the realities of young brains with tumours.
Dr Yang hopes that he will be able to create a tool for globally accessible, AI-driven tractography that supports safer surgery and better long-term outcomes for children and their families. He says early results have been promising, with his team collaborating with international experts to improve accuracy and move toward safer, faster surgical planning.
It’s not lost on Dr Yang what makes all of this possible, though.
Donations from The Kids’ Cancer Project’s donor community help turn ideas into real tools that can protect a child’s brain during surgery. It supports research that could reduce complications, improve recovery, and give children the best chance at a healthy future.
“Every contribution helps us move closer to safer treatments and better outcomes for kids facing brain cancer.”
Ahead of Brain Cancer Awareness Month and Pirate Day in May, Dr Yang is utilising those funds to the best of his ability as he continues to progress his research. The struggles of those affected by the insidious disease are never far from his mind, and the need to raise funds in an underfunded sector has never been more crucial.
It’s why he’s strapping on an eyepatch, grabbing a sword and charting a course to a world without brain cancer for Pirate Day 2026.
“Events like Pirate Day are incredibly important, because they help people understand how serious childhood brain cancer is and why research matters,” he says.
“They also raise vital funds that support new discoveries, better treatments, and safer surgeries for children and families who urgently need them.
“Without this support from the community and organisations like The Kids Cancer Project, many research projects simply wouldn’t be possible.”
