Artificial intelligence assisted ultrasound for selective screening of hip dysplasia at children’s health care centers in the Netherlands

Abstract

Objectives

To investigate whether adding an artificial intelligence-assisted hip ultrasound (CHC-US) to the selective screening for developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) at Child Health Care (CHC) centers can reduce the number of referrals for hip ultrasound without an increase of missed cases.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional diagnostic study at four CHC centers in the Netherlands between May 2022 and December 2022. All participating infants received both a CHC-US and a Hospital-US. The results of both ultrasounds (US) were analysed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the CHC-US. Descriptive statistics, frequencies, and linear weighted Cohen’s Kappa were used for statistical analysis.

Results

Data from 105 infants (210 hips) were included. In 59 infants (56.2 %) both hips were classified as not having DDH according to the CHC-US, of which two hips were diagnosed with DDH according to the Hospital-US. However, re-evaluation of the Hospital-US images showed no DDH in both cases.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates that CHC-US in selective screening of DDH could reduce the number of hip US referrals by approximately half. CHC-US can be performed by a CHC physician, making integration of US into routine infant welfare visits at CHC-centers feasible.