Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Oct 25:9:994805.
doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.994805. eCollection 2022.

Artificial intelligence in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia: A scoping review

Dmitriy Viderman  1 , Mukhit Dossov  2 , Serik Seitenov  2 , Min-Ho Lee  3
Affiliations

Artificial intelligence in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia: A scoping review

Dmitriy Viderman et al. Front Med (Lausanne). .

Abstract

Background: Regional anesthesia is increasingly used in acute postoperative pain management. Ultrasound has been used to facilitate the performance of the regional block, increase the percentage of successfully performed procedures and reduce the complication rate. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been studied in many medical disciplines with achieving high success, especially in radiology. The purpose of this review was to review the evidence on the application of artificial intelligence for optimization and interpretation of the sonographic image, and visualization of needle advancement and injection of local anesthetic.

Methods: To conduct this scoping review, we followed the PRISMA-S guidelines. We included studies if they met the following criteria: (1) Application of Artificial intelligence-assisted in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia; (2) Any human subject (of any age), object (manikin), or animal; (3) Study design: prospective, retrospective, RCTs; (4) Any method of regional anesthesia (epidural, spinal anesthesia, peripheral nerves); (5) Any anatomical localization of regional anesthesia (any nerve or plexus) (6) Any methods of artificial intelligence; (7) Settings: Any healthcare settings (Medical centers, hospitals, clinics, laboratories.

Results: The systematic searches identified 78 citations. After the removal of the duplicates, 19 full-text articles were assessed; and 15 studies were eligible for inclusion in the review.

Conclusions: AI solutions might be useful in anatomical landmark identification, reducing or even avoiding possible complications. AI-guided solutions can improve the optimization and interpretation of the sonographic image, visualization of needle advancement, and injection of local anesthetic. AI-guided solutions might improve the training process in UGRA. Although significant progress has been made in the application of AI-guided UGRA, randomized control trials are still missing.

Keywords: artificial intelligence; machine learning; peripheral nerve block; regional anesthesia; sono-anatomy; training; ultrasound; ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

    1. Lee CS, Tyring AJ, Wu Y, Xiao S, Rokem AS, DeRuyter NP, et al. . Generating retinal flow maps from structural optical coherence tomography with artificial intelligence. Scient. Rep. (2019) 9:1. 10.1038/s41598-019-42042-y - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Choy G, Khalilzadeh O, Michalski M, Do S, Samir AE, Pianykh OS, et al. . Current applications and future impact of machine learning in radiology. Radiology. (2018) 288:318–28. 10.1148/radiol.2018171820 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sites BD, Chan VW, Neal JM, Weller R, Grau T, Koscielniak-Nielsen ZJ, et al. . The American society of regional anesthesia and pain medicine and the European society of regional Anaesthesia and pain therapy joint committee recommendations for education and training in ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia. Reg Anesth Pain Med. (2009) 34:40–6. 10.1097/AAP.0b013e3181926779 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Strakowski JA. Ultrasound-guided peripheral nerve procedures. Phys Med Rehabil Clin N Am. (2016) 27:687–715. 10.1016/j.pmr.2016.04.006 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Greher M, Retzl G, Niel P, Kamolz L, Marhofer P, Kapral S. Ultrasonographic assessment of topographic anatomy in volunteers suggests a modification of the infraclavicular vertical brachial plexus block. Br J Anaesth. (2002) 88:632–6. 10.1093/bja/88.5.632 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types