Comparison of the quality of ultrasound images
Secondary objectives are to compare the quality of ultrasound images acquired by a radiologist with those acquired by the robotic arm and to assess the user experience of robotic ultrasound (US) examination.
Overdiagnosis
Improved diagnosis of thyroid nodules should be a high priority in the health sector. Today, many people are over-diagnosed with nodules that would never cause any symptom. Furthermore, many of these are overtreated with diagnostic surgery. The rate of diagnostic surgeries in Europe is over 30 percent (eurocrine.eu). There is a huge potential for reduction overdiagnosis and overtreatment for this group of patients.
Assessment of findings requires a high level of expertise
Almost 50 percent of the adult population have nodules in the thyroid glands. These are being discovered at an increasing rate because radiological procedures are becoming increasingly common. Incidental findings in the thyroid require a dedicated assessment with ultrasound, but a high level of expertise is necessary to secure the diagnosis. In Norway, many patients need to travel by plane to have thyroid US examination performed by an expert. We propose to use robotic thyroid US for image acquisition, to standardize the image scans sufficiently to allow remote interpretation.
Examinations closer to the patient's home
It is likely that robots will become more available than radiologists/-ultrasound operators specialized in each organ. This may allow the examinations to happen closer to homes, while images still being accessible for expert evaluation.
More robotic laboratories across the country
As far as we know, this is the first project in the north of Norway testing robotic ultrasound examinations. In the future, we may have access to several robotic examination labs across the country, making expert interpretations of images more accessible to the population.
Standardization of the method
There is a secondary benefit of this line of work in the standardization of acquisition of ultrasound images. The modality of ultrasound is relatively cheap and has no radiation, but it is often disfavored because of its subjectivity/operator dependency. Any standardization of the method will make it more robust and meet this criticism. This may promote ultrasound as an unharmful low-cost examination, still standardized enough to make good decisions.
