Regio Zuid | Better prenatal screening, healthier babies!

Modern prenatal medicine (for guiding pregnancy and childbirth) relies heavily on ultrasound scans to provide detailed images of the fetus and uterus and in this way rule out or confirm certain birth defects. While ultrasound is a powerful tool - it is inexpensive, safe, portable, and images are acquired in real-time - its diagnostic accuracy and sensitivity are limited in comparison to other imaging techniques. One of the reasons that ultrasound is hard to understand and interpret is because it can be difficult to understand the spatial relations in 2D-cross sections of 3D anatomical structures. Therefore, in some cases, prenatal ultrasound can miss some fetal abnormalities, or may have a lower sensitivity than desirable..Recent advancements in ultrasound image resolution of both objective and theoretical origins have shown a great deal of potential. The ultrasounds market is expected to grow to 6.2 billion by 20191. Medivrse, a Maastricht med-tech start-up, is one of the companies working on these better imaging ultrasound techniques as well as applications thereof. Medivrse BV is dedicated to creating virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) solutions for medical applications. Virtual reality is one of the most promising digital technologies at present and it has the potential to change healthcare and everyday medicine completely for physicians and patients alike..The goal of the project is to asses technical, economical and legal feasibility of developing a medical ultrasound scan reader (software), which can be used for improved prenatal screening: Detection and exploration of the features of the baby and placenta during pregnancy (measurements, detecting abnormalities of growth)..The to be developed software would be able to read ultrasound imaging data and combine this with VR visualization and interaction technology. It therefore serves as an ‘add-on’ PC application able to read ultrasound scans coming from existing ultrasound machines, and will be compatible with existing VR hardware..The execution plan for the Feasibility study is divided into the following work packages:.? WP 1: Technical feasibility;.? WP 2: Proof of principle;.? WP 3: Economic and legal feasibility..This project fits within the topsector Life Sciences and Health (LSH), theme number 5.2 ‘Imaging & image-guided therapies’