Non-invasive Imaging System for Fetal Brain Development

Yoshio Okada of Boston Children's Hospital in the U.S. will develop a non-invasive technique to measure the brain activity of fetuses in pregnant women in order to detect abnormalities. Current methods suffer from noise contamination and lack of sensitivity. Their new method involves a dual array of magnetic sensors placed around the entire torso of the mother and will be evaluated for its ability to discriminate fetal brain signals from noise. They are working towards a method that is relatively inexpensive and can also be used in developing countries with minimal training to monitor the fetal heart and brain as well as the maternal heart and gastrointestinal tract.