A method for determining an acceptable spinal surgical plan for a subject using pathology prediction, comprising generating a potential spinal surgical plan, obtaining clinically relevant data of the subject, obtaining pre-operative three-dimensional images of a spinal region of the subject, determining relationships between pairs of vertebrae in the images, predicting relationships between pairs of vertebrae that are expected from the surgical plan, accessing a multiple patient database, obtaining sets of data from the database for patients with similar characteristics to the subject, determining risks of pathology types for the subject, using artificial intelligence to combine the determined risks to calculate an overall risk for pathology types for the subject, and if the overall risks are unacceptable, selecting an alternative spinal surgical plan, and if the said overall risks are acceptable, determining that said surgical plan is acceptable.
