Novel Artificial Intelligence-Driven Infant Meningitis Screening From High-Resolution Ultrasound Imaging.
Journal:
Ultrasound in medicine & biology
Published Date:
Jun 29, 2025
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Infant meningitis can be a life-threatening disease and requires prompt and accurate diagnosis to prevent severe outcomes or death. Gold-standard diagnosis requires lumbar puncture (LP) to obtain and analyze cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Despite being standard practice, LPs are invasive, pose risks for the patient and often yield negative results, either due to contamination with red blood cells from the puncture itself or because LPs are routinely performed to rule out a life-threatening infection, despite the disease's relatively low incidence. Furthermore, in low-income settings where incidence is the highest, LPs and CSF exams are rarely feasible, and suspected meningitis cases are generally treated empirically. There is a growing need for non-invasive, accurate diagnostic methods.
