Delicate surgeries being carried out across the world are being beamed live to Dundee to help train the next generation of health experts.
About 300 surgeons are expected to attend the second International Live Laparoscopic Surgery meeting.
Laparoscopic surgery, also known as keyhole surgery, is performed by passing instruments through small tubes inserted into short incisions.
A camera displays what is happening internally onto a video monitor.
It can be a popular method with patients and doctors because only small cuts are made into the body.
That means recovery time and the risk of pain or infection after the procedure can be reduced.
At the conference in Dundee, more than 25 surgical procedures will be broadcast in real time to the watching audience.
Master surgeons from places such as the USA, Italy, Switzerland, India, the Netherlands, France and Spain will carry-out the operations.
Event organiser and laparoscopic surgeon at Ninewells Hospital, Francesco Polignano, said: "The next challenge with keyhole surgery is training people to do it and spreading it beyond the borders of highly specialised hospitals like Ninewells.
"The first stage, which was the development of the technique, has now been completed. The challenge for us now is to keep up and try to teach the technique to other people.
"It is intrinsically more difficult to do a laparoscopic operation because the surgeon is in a hostile environment with two dimensions only and he works from a distance, he doesn't actually grab and hold things in his hands.
"So the challenge really is to teach the new generations of surgeons how to do it and hopefully to spread the laparoscopic technique with its advantages to all hospitals in the UK and Europe."
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