AI system for fetal ultrasound in low-resource settings
This addresses maternal and perinatal health challenges in low-to-middle income countries by enabling minimally trained operators to perform critical ultrasound assessments.
The researchers tackled the problem of limited access to fetal ultrasound in low-resource settings by developing an AI system that uses novice-acquired ultrasound videos to estimate gestational age and detect fetal malpresentation, achieving non-inferior performance to standard methods with as few as two sweeps and high AUC-ROCs.
Despite considerable progress in maternal healthcare, maternal and perinatal deaths remain high in low-to-middle income countries. Fetal ultrasound is an important component of antenatal care, but shortage of adequately trained healthcare workers has limited its adoption. We developed and validated an artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses novice-acquired "blind sweep" ultrasound videos to estimate gestational age (GA) and fetal malpresentation. We further addressed obstacles that may be encountered in low-resourced settings. Using a simplified sweep protocol with real-time AI feedback on sweep quality, we have demonstrated the generalization of model performance to minimally trained novice ultrasound operators using low cost ultrasound devices with on-device AI integration. The GA model was non-inferior to standard fetal biometry estimates with as few as two sweeps, and the fetal malpresentation model had high AUC-ROCs across operators and devices. Our AI models have the potential to assist in upleveling the capabilities of lightly trained ultrasound operators in low resource settings.