By Dave Andrusko

London's Hammersmith Hospital, working with the Medical Research Council of the UK, is using high quality magnetic resonance imaging to obtain sophisticated three dimensional images of the brains of unborn babies as they develop, according to BBC News. It is by no means the first hospital to use MRI technology with unborn babies, but the first to get around the inherent difficulty that the little ones often refuse to sit still.

Professor Mary Rutherford, a neonatal neuroradiologist at Hammersmith Hospital, explained that her team circumvented the problem of wiggling babies by taking multiple scans of the brain and then using a “computer program to re-order them and form a 3D image,” according to BBC News.

“Using the scans doctors say they expect better diagnoses of brain disorders, including malformations, growth problems or injuries that can lead to cerebral palsy and sometimes autism.”

Given the anti-life track record when doctors are able to detect problems in utero, this new technology would seem to, at best, be a double-edged sword. At least for now, Dr. Rutherford’s comments accentuated the positive.

“This information will help obstetricians to decide whether a baby is likely to have severe problems with development or whether to deliver a baby sooner as brain growth may be better outside the womb," she said. "What we are trying to do with the foetal MRI is to improve our way of understanding how the foetal brain develops both abnormally and normally so it gives us more information than ultrasound alone,” Dr. Rutherford explained.

Of late the team has been looking at fetal problems with pretty high morbidity. “The babies that survive are often born prematurely and may be susceptible to brain injury and gut inflammation,” Dr. Rutherford told Jane Elliot of BBC News. “And even if they escape early problems, if you look at them at school they do not function as well as their peers so that there is something is effecting their brain development."

The goal is to follow the children with “restricted growth” perhaps as long as until they enter school, but at least the first two years.

The chance to participate in the trial will be offered to all pregnant women at Hammersmith Hospital “as this will enable the researchers to recruit a large number of normal and abnormal brains to study,” according to BBC News

"Most women enjoy coming and benefit from the expertise and attention throughout their pregnancy," said Professor Rutherford.

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Part Two