Freehand Ultrasound Demonstrations

This work was supported and supervised by the Medical Ethics Committee, School of Medicine, Wuhan University, Ethics Statement No. WHU2021-PMC002. The experiment was carried out at Wuhan University Hospital. The sonographer performed 5 examinations of the left kidney for each volunteer. A total of 24 volunteers (14 males and 10 females) participated in our experiment. To make the individual differences more typical, we not only considered sexes but also deliberately included people with different ages and BMIs. The BMIs of the volunteers ranged from 16.4 (underweight) to 26.7 (overweight), and their ages ranged from 19 to 67 years. In total, there are 53571 records of multimodal data in our dataset. The recording frequency is 10 Hz. A complete demonstration starts with the sonographer holding the probe holder vertically on the target part. After 3~5 seconds of coordinate alignment and gravity calibration, the sonographer begins to perform freehand ultrasound examinations. Each demonstration lasts 40~80 seconds. The ultrasound examination should cover the entire kidney. Meanwhile, the sonographer should make sure that the collected ultrasound images are as clear as possible with centered image content.

本研究由武汉大学医学院医学伦理委员会支持并监管，伦理审查编号为WHU2021-PMC002。实验在武汉大学医院开展。超声医师为每位志愿者完成5次左肾检查。本实验共招募24名志愿者，其中男性14名、女性10名。为使个体差异更具典型性，研究在纳入不同性别受试者的基础上，还刻意选取了不同年龄与身体质量指数（Body Mass Index, BMI）的人群。志愿者的BMI范围为16.4（体重偏轻）至26.7（体重超重），年龄区间为19至67岁。本数据集总计包含53571条多模态数据记录，采样频率为10 Hz。完整演示流程如下：超声医师将探头支架垂直置于目标部位，待坐标对齐与重力校准耗时3~5秒后，开始进行徒手超声检查。每段演示时长为40~80秒，需覆盖整个肾脏区域，同时需确保采集的超声图像清晰度良好且画面内容居中。