Image quality evaluation of a portable handheld ultrasound machine for the focused assessment with sonography for trauma examination

Introduction Benefits of handheld ultrasound devices include ease of portability,1,2 lower cost,3,4 and potentially reduced examination time.5 However, questions have been raised about the quality of images obtained on these devices.4 We hypothesized that the overall image quality of the smaller handheld device would be inferior to that of a larger cart-mounted machine during the focused assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST) examination. Study setting and population This study was performed in an urban tertiary care hospital with an emergency medicine residency program.