Smart, automated junctional tourniquets leveraging AI-driven ultrasound guidance

Tourniquets are commonly used devices for hemorrhage control; however, their effectiveness is reduced in anatomical junctions such as the neck and inguinal region. Junctional tourniquets specifically require precise placement to be effective. This precision can be enabled with ultrasound technology to help locate and occlude the major vessels in the junctional regions properly. However, interpretation of ultrasound requires highly skilled personnel, who may not necessarily be available in emergency situations. To overcome this hurdle, we have developed two ultrasound-enabled, AI-driven junctional tourniquet prototypes. AI models can aid in guiding the end-user to the correct location and determine occlusion during and after pressure application. Proof-of-concept functionality of the developed prototypes integrated with AI models was successfully tested in a durable, ultrasound-compatible femoral tissue phantom and compared against commercially available tourniquet devices. Overall, time to occlusion was comparable between the tourniquet prototype designs and traditional junctional tourniquets, while each AI model achieved high performance metrics for this application. As such, the combination of AI and ultrasound can prove to be a viable solution to prevent further hemorrhaging at the point of injury.