Michael House, MD (Co-I) will be collaborating in a study entitled “Fetal Neuroimaging Predictors of Childhood Neurodevelopmental Outcomes in Fetuses with Isolated Ventriculomegaly.” With this award from the CTSI Pilot Study Program, a team of investigators from Maternal Fetal Medicine, Radiology and Pediatric Neurology Departments at Tufts Medical Center will study novel technology to precisely assess brain growth of fetuses with a condition called ventriculomegaly, the most common fetal brain anomaly detected during pregnancy. Although it is common, there is no technology to accurately predict how this anomaly impacts a child’s future neurodevelopment. The team has developed new computational tools to precisely measure fetal brain growth in fetuses with ventriculomegaly by using fetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This new study will examine whether the precise assessment of fetal brain growth can actually predict the child’s neurodevelopmental outcomes in early childhood. The study will recruit pregnant women whose fetuses are diagnosed with ventriculomegaly and those without any fetal anomaly for comparison.
