Background  With the rapid development of respiratory intervention technology, especially the appearance of intrabronchial ultrasound with radial probe, the diagnosis rate of peripheral pulmonary lesions is significantly improved, and it is an important tool for the diagnosis of early lung cancer.

  Objective  To evaluate the feasibility, performance and safety of intratracheal ultrasound examination with self-developed medical radial probe through animal experiments and isolated pig lung experiments.

  Methods  Eight Guangxi Bama miniature pigs were examined by 4 physicians with 5-year experience in respiratory endoscopy using the self-developed radial probe intratracheal ultrasound (experimental group) and Olympus's UM-S20-17s radial probe intratracheal ultrasound (control group). The self-control method was used. According to the method of flipping a coin, the sequence of the two kinds of endobronchial ultrasound examination in the same Bama piglet was randomly determined, and the quantitative scoring method was used to evaluate the operation performance and safety of the two kinds of endobronchial ultrasound. Eight isolated pig lungs were used to separate the local subsegmental bronchi, and edible jelly was implanted next to the isolated segmental bronchi to establish an in vitro tumor model. The tumor model was examined by self-control method with the self-developed VsonicPro2017C radial probe bronchial ultrasound (experimental group) and Olympus UM-S20-17s endobronchial ultrasound (control group). The quantitative scoring method was used to evaluate the distinguishing ability of two kinds of endobronchial ultrasound to tumor model and the ability to judge the echo characteristics of tumor.

  Results  There were no significant differences in the scores of whether it was convenient to connect with the host (7.56±0.21 vs 7.84±0.18), the difficulty of inserting the biopsy channel (7.47±0.26 vs 7.94±0.13), whether the ultrasound could work normally after inserting the biopsy channel (7.53±0.22 vs 7.84±0.34), the image acquisition and storage (7.53±0.12 vs 7.94±0.18), and whether the image quality met the quality requirements (7.38±0.24 vs 7.69±0.17) between the two groups (all P＞0.05). The scores of tumor resolution and tumor echo characteristics in the experimental group and the control group were 7.66±0.22 vs 7.84±0.21, 7.63±0.28 vs 7.84±0.51, respectively, without significant difference between the two groups (P＞0.05). No related complication was found in both the experimental group and the control group.

  Conclusion  The self-developed radial probe intratracheal ultrasound (VsonicPro2017C) is safe, feasible and simple, it can clearly observe the characteristics of parabolic lesions with good operation performance and image quality, which has a good application prospect.