Blind-sweep ultrasound read by AI: novice operators with low-cost probes approach expert gestational-age accuracy in a prospective multicenter study
A prospective multicenter diagnostic study tested whether an AI system could read standardized "blind sweep" ultrasound images and estimate gestational age in real clinics, on mobile devices, with novice operators and unfamiliar hardware. The model was minimally tuned on a small pilot set of 120 participants in Chicago, with Nairobi site data held out as a strictly independent external test; in a primary cohort of 385 participants between 16 and 36 weeks, AI gestational-age estimates were comparable in accuracy to the current standard of care from expert operators using traditional cart-based ultrasound.