Placenta previa and low-lying placenta are dangerous conditions that can cause severe
maternal and fetal complications. Obstetric ultrasound imaging is commonly used to
detect these maternal risk factors. Unfortunately, low-income countries suffer from a
shortage of trained sonographers to perform ultrasound examinations. To address this
problem, this study presents an algorithm to automatically detect low-lying placenta or
placenta previa from ultrasound data acquired with a standardized acquisition protocol.
This acquisition protocol can be taught to any healthcare worker within two hours. The
detection algorithm was optimized for performance and efficiency so that it can run on
a smartphone in combination with low-cost ultrasound equipment. The dataset used
in this study originates from St. Luke's hospital in Wolisso, Ethiopia and was acquired
with a low-cost ultrasound device. The detection algorithm consisted of two parts. First