AI-enabled, ultrasound-guided device could save lives on the battlefield

A team of researchers in the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Radiology and at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have developed an ultrasound-guided handheld robotic device that allows non-specialists — including combat medics in battlefield settings — to access deep arteries and veins for life-saving applications. Dubbed AI-GUIDE, the device takes advantage of advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to enable semi-automated placement of large-bore catheters in patients in critical need of fluid replacement or other interventions. The researchers reported the device in December in the journal Biosensors.

In a Q&A, Theodore Pierce, MD, an abdominal radiologist at Mass General, a faculty member in the Center for Ultrasound Research & Translation, and one of the inventors of AI-GUIDE, discusses the device itself, the applications that could benefit from its use, and the possibility of it bringing about a paradigm shift in ultrasound-guided interventions.