Software Flags Elevated Cerebral Palsy Risk in Premies

Diagnostic imaging scientists have developed a software tool for predicting the future onset of cerebral palsy in babies born prematurely. Children born earlier than 30 weeks of gestation face a staggeringly elevated risk of problems with motor development. This is in part due to abnormalities in their white matter, deep regions in the brain that contain nerve fibers.

Almost 70 percent of babies born extremely prematurely display these white matter abnormalities and up to 10 percent of them go on to develop cerebral palsy, or CP, a permanent and incurable movement disorder.

According to experts, earlier CP diagnoses lead to earlier interventions, transforming the quality of life for both the children affected and their caregivers. Physical therapy, for example, if initiated early in the child’s development, could help reduce symptoms of CP including stiffness, tremors, and problems with fine motor control. Current neuroimaging technologies are unfortunately not able to achieve this, largely due to sensitivity constraints and highly subjective assessment protocols.

Neonatologist Nehal Parikh from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center led a team that developed a computational tool to analyze magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans taken of preterm infants, flagging those with signature…