A recent study revealed that Ultrasound (Ultrasound) is 9% superior to human experts in the diagnosis of tuberculosis. This innovation provides a quick and easy alternative to detecting tuberculosis without the need to conduct complex phlegm tests, which will contribute to fighting this disease globally.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and the University of Yale in the United States, and its results were presented at the European Association for Clinical Biology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID Global 2025), which was held in April in Vienna, the capital of Austria, and wrote about the Yurrick Alrt.
The researchers have developed an artificial intelligence technology known as Ultr-Ei, to analyze images taken by mobile ultrasound devices connected to smartphones.
This technique works through 3 artificial intelligence models, the first predicts tuberculosis from lung images directly, and the second defines the patterns and signs that human experts can usually notice in lung images, and the third merges the results of the first two models and uses the highest risk rate to determine the presence of the disease with more accuracy.
Promising results
The study included 504 patients from a medical center in the Republic of Benin, West Africa, 192 of whom were infected with pulmonary tuberculosis. The results of this technique showed a significant superiority in the diagnosis of the disease, and it was able to discover 93% of the TB cases, a percentage that exceeds the standards of the World Health Organization that determine 90%.
These results are a major step towards accelerating early disease detection and diagnosing cases with more accurately, which contributes to providing more effective health care at a lower cost.
“Our model is able to discover the usual signs known to experts in the lung ultrasound examination such as large clumps and changes in tissues, but what distinguishes it is that it picks up accurate details that the human eye cannot notice,” said Dr. Veronik Sotiles of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Lausanne, and the researcher participating in the study.
Dr. Sotiles: “One of the most prominent advantages of this technology is that it provides immediate results when used in mobile applications. This makes the ultrasound an effective tool in the location of health care, allowing doctors to obtain quick results while the patient is in the clinic.”