Holding the probe to acquire a cardiac ultrasound · Contested (since 2020)

On 7 February 2020 the FDA authorised Caption Guidance, the first software cleared to steer a user's hand in real time during medical imaging, so that someone with no ultrasound training could obtain usable views of the heart.

Acquiring an echocardiogram is manual skill, learned over years against the resistance of ribs and lung, and it is the reason the examination stayed with trained sonographers. In the study behind the authorisation, published in JAMA Cardiology in 2021, nurses with no prior ultrasound experience scanned 240 patients and the images were good enough to judge left ventricular size and function in 98.8 percent of them. The software says where to move and when to freeze, and stops there. It does not read the study, does not report it, and a cardiologist still interprets it. What moved is the hand, not the diagnosis.