Developer and Clinical Lead
Hüseyin Cengiz, M.D.
Ophthalmic Surgeon · Developer of CER-AI
Approximately 30 years of clinical and surgical ophthalmology experience
Refractive · Cataract · Vitreoretinal Surgery
Founder, Vision Eye Hospital
Founder’s Note
After more than thirty years of surgical and administrative experience, I wanted to find a way to pass some of that accumulated knowledge on to the generations that follow.
As a refractive surgeon, one of the complications we fear most is corneal ectasia. My aim was to develop a system that could help identify ectasia susceptibility more reliably before surgery and, ultimately, help protect patients from an avoidable complication. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, I used established clinical evidence, modern imaging data, and my own surgical experience to design a structured clinical decision-support platform.
CER-AI — Corneal Ectasia Risk Assessment Intelligence — is the single current product name used throughout the platform.
The software developed progressively through versions 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and subsequent iterations, reaching version 2.0 at the time of writing. It is under continuous development, so by the time you read this, a newer version may already be in use.
During its development, I conducted an extensive review of the medical literature related to corneal ectasia, keratoconus susceptibility, refractive-surgery screening, corneal tomography, topography, biomechanics, and tissue safety. I used this evidence and practical surgical experience to present several ectasia-risk assessment systems within one auditable workflow.
A central principle of CER-AI is that these systems remain independent from one another. CER-AI does not merge, blend, harmonize, average, or add their results into a single opaque score. Each pathway evaluates the case separately so that the surgeon can see where agreement or disagreement exists between different risk-assessment approaches.
The primary purpose of CER-AI is not to make the surgical decision on behalf of the physician. It is designed to support the physician’s decision-making, to organize complex preoperative information, and most importantly, to help identify a finding that may otherwise have been overlooked.
To younger colleagues in particular, I would like to emphasize a principle that has guided me throughout my surgical career: Whatever the procedure, our first responsibility is to avoid harming the patient.
Technology, imaging, scoring systems, and artificial intelligence can assist us, but they should always serve that fundamental clinical responsibility.