UltraSight, an Israel-based digital health pioneer transforming cardiac imaging through the power of artificial intelligence, today announced new results from a landmark pivotal study. According to the results, UltraSight’s AI guidance and quality assessment technology enables physicians with no prior experience in sonography to accurately perform echocardiographic exams and obtain high-quality diagnostic images of the heart.
This multi-center study was conducted at two US sites, including the University of Chicago and Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Sheba Medical Center in Israel. It evaluated 2D transthoracic echocardiography images acquired by nine residents and nurses, none of whom had prior cardiac ultrasound experience, using UltraSight’s AI real-time guidance software. After a one-day training course, the novice ultrasound users scanned 240 cardiac patients and recorded 10 standard echocardiographic views. Patients were also scanned by a professional sonographer without using the software, and each exam was blindly evaluated by a panel of five board-certified cardiologists, who rated the exams for their diagnostic quality and anatomical elements.
“The quality of exams performed by both novice and professional cardiac sonographers was remarkably comparable,” said Prof. Roberto M. Lang MD, director of the Noninvasive Cardiac Imaging Laboratory at the University of Chicago and principal investigator. “After analyzing the results, it is evident that healthcare professionals without prior sonography training can follow the software’s instructions and acquire diagnostic-quality ultrasound images of patient hearts.”
The results confirm that the cardiac exams performed by the inexperienced ultrasound users successfully allowed assessment of the following:
Left ventricular size (99.2 percent)
Left ventricular function (99.6 percent)
size of the right ventricle (93 percent); and
Presence of significant pericardial effusion (100 percent)
The results also confirm that with UltraSight’s AI guidance, novice ultrasound users can capture diagnostic quality images of the 10 standard echocardiographic views in 68 to 94 percent of exams, similar to the results of a pilot study conducted earlier this year.
“UltraSight’s technology was designed to enable healthcare professionals, regardless of their ultrasound experience, to capture diagnostic high-quality cardiac ultrasound exams,” said Davidi Vortman, CEO of UltraSight. “We are thrilled that all of the study’s primary and secondary endpoints were met.”
