What is not known is the impact that premature birth has on heart development in the weeks and months after birth and how this may affect the heart’s short and long-term function and the normal development of the brain.
Currently the most common way to assess the anatomy and function of a premature baby’s heart is through an echocardiography (a form of ultrasound scan). However neonatal echocardiography is limited in the amount of structural detail that it can provide and the reliability of its measures of heart function. Performing MRI scans of premature hearts gives a far higher level of detail and allows for techniques that can directly compare the structure and function of different babies’ hearts in a far more robust way.
To create the premature heart MRI ‘atlas’ (model of heart development with time) 50 premature babies from 23-36 weeks will be scanned – each premature baby will have two scans, the first scan within the first week of birth and the second when they were due to be born. Twenty full-term, healthy babies will also be scanned as a comparison. The data from the MRI scans will be post-processed by a method called ‘computational atlasing’ to create accurate models of the preterm heart which both visually show and quantify growth and function. This ‘computational atlasing’ technology – a new method for looking at the premature heart – will allow the comparison of premature hearts to gather information about what is ‘normal’ and what factors (e.g. sex, infection, medications) have the greatest effects on normal and abnormal heart development and function. The information gathered constructing the atlas will allow us to identify new strategies of how best to support the premature heart after birth. How the development of the heart affects the development of the brain (and likelihood of neurodisability) will also be explored.”
http://www.sparks.org.uk/research/
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