Feasibility of teleoperated robotic echocardiography – A pilot study

Purpose: Echocardiography is dependent on highly specialized healthcare professionals. Teleoperated examinations could provide higher availability of specialized care for patients living in rural areas. The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of a teleoperated robotic echocardiography system. Methods: Twenty-three healthy volunteers underwent teleoperated echocardiography, compared to standard bedside echocardiography. Examination time, image quality, ability to assess cardiac structures, measurements of left ventricular fractional shortening and blood flow velocities were compared. Image quality was rated on a scale from 0 to 3. Results: Approximately 90% of robotically acquired images were rated as medium quality or better and approximately 80% of cardiac structures were evaluated as assessable by at least one evaluator. Mean image quality was lower for robotic (1.6 ± 0.3) compared to standard clinical examinations (2.5 ± 0.4) (p = 0.001). Left ventricular fractional shortening from the robotic examinations was 2.2%, p = 0.160 (absolute value) lower compared to the reference and showed a variation coefficient of 19%. The calculated Doppler insonation angles deviated from the reference by more than 25° for three of four blood flow velocity measurements. The teleoperated examinations had a mean examination time of 26.4 min and were 1.9 times longer compared to the reference (p = 0.001). Conclusion: This feasibility study of teleoperated echocardiography shows promising results for the presented system. Clinically satisfactory imaging, particularly measurements of dimension and velocities, requires further development of the system.