Imaging performance of portable and conventional ultrasound imaging technologies for ophthalmic applications

Jack O Thomas; Josiah K To; Anderson N Vu; David Horton; Ermin Dzihic; Andrew W Browne

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0300451

Imaging performance of portable and conventional ultrasound imaging technologies for ophthalmic applications

PLoS One. 2024 May 13;19(5):e0300451. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300451. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Jack O Thomas^{1

2}, Josiah K To¹, Anderson N Vu¹, David Horton³, Ermin Dzihic³, Andrew W Browne^{1

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America.
² School of Medicine, California University of Science and Medicine, Colton, California, United States of America.
³ School of Medicine, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America.
⁴ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Henry Samueli School of Engineering, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America.
⁵ Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America.

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the imaging capabilities of Butterfly iQ with conventional ophthalmic (piezoelectric) ultrasound (COU) for ophthalmic imaging.

Methods: Custom phantom molds were designed and imaged with Butterfly iQ and COU to compare spatial resolution capabilities. To evaluate the clinical imaging performance of Butterfly iQ and COU, a survey containing pathological conditions from human subjects, imaged with both Butterfly iQ and COU probes, was given to three retina specialists and graded on image detail, resolution, quality, and diagnostic confidence on a ten-point Likert scale. Kruskal-Wallis analysis was performed for survey responses.

Results: Butterfly iQ and COU had comparable capabilities for imaging small axial and lateral phantom features (down to 0.1 mm) of high and low acoustic reflectivity. One of three retina specialists demonstrated a statistically significant preference for COU related to resolution, detail, and diagnostic confidence, but the remaining graders showed no significant preference for Butterfly iQ or COU across all sample images presented.

Conclusion: The emergence of portable ultrasound probes offers an affordable alternative to COU technologies with comparable qualitative imaging resolution down to 0.1 mm. These findings suggest the value to further study the use of portable ultrasound systems and their utility in routine eye care.

Copyright: © 2024 Thomas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Eye Diseases / diagnostic imaging
Humans
Phantoms, Imaging*
Ultrasonography* / instrumentation
Ultrasonography* / methods

Grants and funding

Research to Prevent Blindness Grant #: None Recipient: University of California Irvine Department of Ophthalmology BrightFocus Foundation Award#: M2021013N Recipient: Andrew W. Browne Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Award#: None Recipient: University of California Irvine Department of Ophthalmology The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.