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. 2019 Nov 26;6(6):210-213.
doi: 10.1049/htl.2019.0081. eCollection 2019 Dec.

Development and face validation of ultrasound-guided renal biopsy virtual trainer

Andinet Enquobahrie  1 , Sam Horvath  1 , Sreekanth Arikatla  1 , Avi Rosenberg  2 , Kevin Cleary  3 , Karun Sharma  3
Affiliations

Development and face validation of ultrasound-guided renal biopsy virtual trainer

Andinet Enquobahrie et al. Healthc Technol Lett. .

Abstract

The overall prevalence of chronic kidney disease in the general population is ∼14% with more than 661,000 Americans having a kidney failure. Ultrasound (US)-guided renal biopsy is a critically important tool in the evaluation and management of renal pathologies. This Letter presents KBVTrainer, a virtual simulator that the authors developed to train clinicians to improve procedural skill competence in US-guided renal biopsy. The simulator was built using low-cost hardware components and open source software libraries. They conducted a face validation study with five experts who were either adult/pediatric nephrologists or interventional/diagnostic radiologists. The trainer was rated very highly (>4.4) for the usefulness of the real US images (highest at 4.8), potential usefulness of the trainer in training for needle visualization, tracking, steadiness and hand-eye coordination, and overall promise of the trainer to be useful for training US-guided needle biopsies. The lowest score of 2.4 was received for the look and feel of the US probe and needle compared to clinical practice. The force feedback received a moderate score of 3.0. The clinical experts provided abundant verbal and written subjective feedback and were highly enthusiastic about using the trainer as a valuable tool for future trainees.

Keywords: US images; US-guided needle biopsy; US-guided renal biopsy; Web-based application; adult-paediatric nephrologists; automated skill assessment; biomedical education; biomedical ultrasonics; chronic kidney disease; clinical experts; clinical validation study; competent biopsy technique; computer based training; diseases; face validation; hand-eye coordination; high yield biopsy samples; interventional-diagnostic radiologists; kidney; kidney failure; low-cost hardware components; medical computing; needle visualisation; needles; open source software libraries; paediatrics; patient treatment; procedural skill competence; public domain software; renal pathologies; surgery; time 3.0 year to 23.0 year; tracking modules; ultrasound-guided renal biopsy virtual trainer; virtual simulator.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Needle pathway in kidney biopsy [4]
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Blue phantom US biopsy trainer [9]
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
KBVTrainer setup showing the hardware and the software user interface
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Workflow diagram showing the key processing units and the flow of image, position, force and deformation data
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Chart summarising the scores obtained for various questions related to different aspects of the KBVTrainer
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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