Comparing the temporal efficiency and consistency of an ultrasound identification program versus human identification

Previous research has shown that program-based identification was a reliable method to identify lumbar spine vertebrae for epidural procedures. The consistency and temporal efficiency of this program-based identification (PBI) was found to be vastly greater than that of human identification. Likewise, this study assessed a custom ultrasound identification program (UIP), and found that UIP contains increased consistency and temporal efficiency compared to the human identification of the L1 and L2 spinous processes. The program-based identification used a series of functions to isolate and measure several metrics of the L1 and L2 spinous processes. UIP had greater consistency and speed versus human identification, specifically UIP required one sixth of the processing time and had no deviation from the mean.