Tele-ultrasound imaging using smartphones and single-board PCs

Abstract

Backgraund: mobile devices are widely available and their computational performance increases, allowing them to enter new areas of application. In this situation, medicine should not be a failure: single-screen computers and mobile phones are essential companions for telehealth professionals
 Aim: to explore opportunities for ultrasonic Tele-Ultrasound using smartphones and single-plate computers.
 Materials and methods: this study focused on the capture of ultrasound videos using external video recording devices connected via USB. Raspberry Pi single-board computers and Android smartphones have been used as platforms to host a tele-ultrasound server. Used software: VLC, Motion, USB Camera. A remote expert assessment was carried out with mobile devices using the following software: VLC acted as a VLC server, Google Chrome for OS Windows 7 and OS Android was used in the remaining scenarios, and the Chromium browser was installed on the Raspberry Pi computer.
 Outcomes: the UTV007 chip-based video capture device produces better images than the AMT630A-based device. The optimum video resolution is 720x576, 25 frames per second. VLC and OBS studios are considered to be the most suitable for a raspberry-based ultrasound system due to low equipment and bandwidth requirements (0.640.17 Mbps for VLC and reduced to 0.5 Mbps for OBS studio). For Android phone OS the ultra-sound system was set with the USB camera software, although it required a faster network connection speed (5.20.3 Mbps).
 Conclusion: it is possible to implement tele-ultrasound imaging systems with mobile devices. Due to the limited bandwidth, single-board computers are generally considered the best hosting platform for servers. On the condition that there is a sufficiently wide and stable Internet connection, the tele-ultrasound server can also be installed on a smartphone.