The window into the womb just got a little bigger.
Ultrasounds have come a long way over the last few years, but now a new MRI scan is showing the world just how busy a baby inside the womb is. Using algorithms, radio waves, and magnetic fields, MRI machines are able to produce a remarkably clear image, showing babies wiggling, stretch, and even grabbbing onto the umbilical cord.
According to The Daily Mail, a team of medical researchers at Kings College in London, St Thomas’ Hospital, Imperial College London, University of Firenze, and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and Philips Healthcare developed a new MRI scan hoping to get more detailed images of preborn children, which can be difficult to get when they are being active. With this scan, doctors can see the organs and other body parts of the preborn child much more vividly. This allows them to better diagnose a variety of in-utero issues or treat certain conditions before the child is even born.
The iFIND project created a short video of a 20-week preborn child during an MRI scan. The baby can be seen jumping around, stretching, and even giving his mother a good kick. The video has been popular across social media networks and has been given to ChannelMum.com to share with mothers around the world.
Dr. David Lloyd, a Clinical Research Fellow at Kings College told The Daily Mail that taking images of a 20 week fetus isn’t all that easy, but the MRI is not as limited as an ultrasound.
“It can see the structures inside the body regardless of whether there’s bone, muscle or fat in the way; and in some cases it can give us even more detailed images than ultrasound,” he explained. “Importantly, it is also one of the few imaging techniques that is safe to use in pregnancy.”
Medical researchers are hoping to improve on the new technology to get even better images of life inside the womb. If this 24-second video is an indication, it’s a pretty busy time for a person.
