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Portable Brain Scanner to Save Premature Babies

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the monstir-in-my-pocket dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers at UCL (University College London) are developing a portable brain scanner which could help save the lives of premature and newborn babies in intensive care by avoiding to move them to conventional scanning facilities. A current prototype combines the advantages of both magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. It uses optical tomography to generate images showing how the brain is working and a new generation should be ready by 2008 and such scanners should be commercially available shortly after."

1 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. MRI helped save my twins by core · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm a dad of twin girls born very prematurely and with an extreme low weight (2 pounds each, basically). They stayed one month in ICU with dedicated monitoring 24/7. Today they're 18 months old, completely healthy with no sequels of their prematurity, partly because they had all the equipment at the ICU (MRI notably); if they moved the girls to a conventional facility they would have been in great danger. Needless to say I'm eternally grateful to medical advancements and the medical personnel that provides the care; I live in a country where we pay taxes through the nose, but I don't mind paying taxes for that purpose :)

    Best regards,
    Emmanuel