Comparison of Six Handheld Ultrasound Devices by Pediatric Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Experts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Point of care ultrasound (POCUS) use is increasing among pediatric clinicians, but lack of access to ultrasound devices is a major barrier. The availability of pocket-sized handheld ultrasound devices (“handhelds”) has improved access. However, no head-to-head comparative studies of handhelds in children have been performed to guide purchasing decisions. Methods: This cross-sectional study compared six handhelds: Butterfly iQ+™ (Butterfly Network Inc.), Clarius® (Clarius Mobile Health™), Kosmos™(EchoNous), TE Air™ (Mindray®), Vscan Air™ SL (General Electric), and Lumify™ (Philips Healthcare). Eight pediatric POCUS experts acquired views showing the abdominal right upper quadrant (RUQ), cardiac apical 4-chamber, and superficial neck and lung on a standardized pediatric model using each handheld. Experts rated each handheld by its image quality, ease of use, and their overall satisfaction. Results: Vscan Air™, Kosmos™, and Lumify™ were rated highest for ease of use, image quality, and overall satisfaction. Most experts recommended Vscan Air™ for purchase. The five most desirable characteristics of handhelds were image quality, ease of use, total costs, transducer size, and availability of different transducer types. All six handhelds had important advantages and disadvantages per experts, and no single device had all the desired characteristics. Conclusions: Pediatric POCUS experts rated Vscan Air™, Kosmos™, and Lumify™ highest for ease of use, image quality, and overall satisfaction. No device was clearly superior across all applications. Subjective characteristics, particularly probe ergonomics, may be a deciding factor when selecting handhelds in pediatrics. There is a need to develop handhelds specifically for use in pediatric populations. Background: Point of care ultrasound (POCUS) use is increasing among pediatric clinicians, but lack of access to ultrasound devices is a major barrier. The availability of pocket-sized handheld ultrasound devices (“handhelds”) has improved access. However, no head-to-head comparative studies of handhelds in children have been performed to guide purchasing decisions. Methods: This cross-sectional study compared six handhelds: Butterfly iQ+™ (Butterfly Network Inc.), Clarius® (Clarius Mobile Health™), Kosmos™(EchoNous), TE Air™ (Mindray®), Vscan Air™ SL (General Electric), and Lumify™ (Philips Healthcare). Eight pediatric POCUS experts acquired views showing the abdominal right upper quadrant (RUQ), cardiac apical 4-chamber, and superficial neck and lung on a standardized pediatric model using each handheld. Experts rated each handheld by its image quality, ease of use, and their overall satisfaction. Results: Vscan Air™, Kosmos™, and Lumify™ were rated highest for ease of use, image quality, and overall satisfaction. Most experts recommended Vscan Air™ for purchase. The five most desirable characteristics of handhelds were image quality, ease of use, total costs, transducer size, and availability of different transducer types. All six handhelds had important advantages and disadvantages per experts, and no single device had all the desired characteristics. Conclusions: Pediatric POCUS experts rated Vscan Air™, Kosmos™, and Lumify™ highest for ease of use, image quality, and overall satisfaction. No device was clearly superior across all applications. Subjective characteristics, particularly probe ergonomics, may be a deciding factor when selecting handhelds in pediatrics. There is a need to develop handhelds specifically for use in pediatric populations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".