Multi-Institutional Survey of 4-Year Ultrasound Quality Control Findings

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging Physics
• Diagnostic Ultrasound Technology
• Quality Assurance in Healthcare

Background:

• Periodic quality control (QC) is crucial for maintaining diagnostic ultrasound (US) imaging system performance and patient safety.
• Current QC practices vary across institutions, necessitating an analysis of real-world findings.
• Understanding common failure points is key to optimizing QC protocols.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze quality control (QC) findings from multi-institutional annual surveys of modern clinical ultrasound (US) systems.
• To identify common issues in both US scanners and transducers requiring corrective actions.
• To provide insights into the current state of US QC practices in the United States.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective collection of QC results from 11 institutions between 2018 and 2021.
• Classification of QC tests into scanner-related and transducer-related categories.
• Analysis of findings requiring follow-up actions, calculating percentages and aggregating data across sites.

Main Results:

• Data included 1069 scanner tests and 4542 transducer tests.
• Average annual scanner findings ranged from 0% to 40.8%, with physical integrity and display monitors being top issues.
• Average annual transducer findings ranged from 0.5% to 19.9%, with uniformity/artifacts and physical integrity being most common.

Conclusions:

• Annual medical physics surveys identified a substantial number of actionable findings in modern ultrasound systems.
• These findings underscore the variability and potential deficiencies in current US QC practices.
• The results can inform future standardization efforts and recommendations for US QC testing.