Multicenter analysis found clinicians with no prior ultrasound experience produced diagnostic-quality echocardiograms in 97.7% of cases following eight hours of training.
A study published in European Heart Journal – Digital Health found that clinicians with no prior ultrasound experience were able to acquire diagnostic-quality cardiac ultrasound images in 97.7% of cases after a single day of AI-guided training.
The multicenter secondary analysis evaluated whether novice operators could obtain diagnostic-quality cardiac ultrasound images using AI-guided imaging support across multiple clinical settings and patient populations.
The prospective study enrolled nine novice operators, including nurses and medical students with no previous ultrasound experience. After eight hours of standardized training, participants performed limited transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) scans on 159 patients at three academic medical centers. Three blinded expert cardiologists independently reviewed and graded image quality.
Key findings included:
- 97.7% of novice-acquired images met the study’s diagnostic-quality threshold.
- All nine operators achieved diagnostic-quality scores on their first independent scan.
- Expert reviewers were able to rule out left ventricular dysfunction in 99.4% of cases and left ventricular hypertrophy in 98.7% of cases.
- Image quality remained consistent across patient subgroups, including differences in age, sex, and cardiac pathology status.
“AI-guided imaging has the potential to meaningfully change how clinicians are introduced to cardiac ultrasound acquisition,” says Andrew Goldsmith, MD, MBA, medical director of UltraSight, in a release. “What stood out in this study was how quickly novice operators were able to achieve diagnostic-quality image acquisition across a range of patient types and clinical environments.”
Goldsmith said the findings suggest AI-guided acquisition may reduce the learning curve and training time required for novice users to perform echocardiograms compared with traditional training approaches.
“One of the biggest barriers to expanding cardiac ultrasound access is the time and training traditionally required to achieve consistent image acquisition,” says Christopher W. Baugh, MD, MBA, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a study author, in a release. “In this study, novice operators were able to obtain diagnostic-quality images very early in the training process, and image quality remained consistently high across patient populations and clinical settings.”
According to the authors, the findings may have implications for emergency and critical care environments where bedside cardiac assessment can influence triage and treatment decisions.
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