Italian doctor Sergio Canavero believes the surgery will help people with degenerative muscle diseases and cancer sufferers
It sounds like the plot from a horror movie, but scientists believe a human head transplant could soon become a reality.
Doctors will launch a project at a conference this summer, with the aim of carrying out the first procedure as soon as 2017.
The man leading the ambitious plan is Italian doctor Sergio Canavero of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group.
He believes head transplants could help people with degenerative muscle disease and cancer sufferers.
After first floating the idea in 2013, Dr Canavero now believes the major obstacles to the pioneering surgery have been overcome, the New Scientist reports.
These include managing to make the spinal cord fuse with a new head, and ensuring the body's immune system does not reject it.
Dr Canavero plans to announce the project at the annual conference of the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons (AANOS) in Annapolis, Maryland, in June.
He published a paper with a theory on how he believes the operation could be carried out successfully this month.
It would involve cooling the recipient's head and the donor body to prolong the time their cells can survive without oxygen.
Tissue around the neck would then be dissected and major blood vessels linked using tiny tubes.
The spinal cords would then be cleanly severed before the recipient's head is moved onto the donor body.
The ends of the spinal cord would be fused using the chemical polyethylene glycol.
After this, the person would be put into a coma for around four weeks while they heal.
Dr Canavero believes the person would wake up with the same voice, move and feel their face and learn to walk within a year.
He says several people have already volunteered to get a new body.
Some critics have blasted Dr Canavero's project 'pure fantasy'.
But it is now more than 40 years since the first monkey head transplant and a similar operation on a mouse was recently successful in China.