AI-guided low-field low-cost fetal MRI

Fetal MRI is an excellent opportunity to gain unique insights into the life of the growing fetus before birth. It plays and important role both to study normal physiological development and early detection of diseases.

While traditionally ultrasound is the standard clinical screening tool , MRI offers increased resolution and the ability to study functional and microstructural properties of tissues (e.g. developing brain or placenta) in addition to volumetric anatomical assessment. This information is of interest for a wide range of pregnancy complications such as pre-eclampsia twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS) or grow restriction beyond others.

However, fetal MRI is currently used only in expert centres and comes at significant cost. Recently emerged low-field MRI scanners, offering novel contrast opportunities, reduced artifacts and with the potential to substantially reduce costs and hence broaden access, meet these challenges. Simultaneously, AI methods able to detect the fetal location and motion in real-time have enabled huge steps towards scan automatization.

This project aims to combine recent advances in MRI technology with AI-guidance to develop a quick and automatic low-cost low-field fetal MRI examination.