Federal Grant Helps Fetal Cardiac MRI Research Continue

Advanced 3D and 4D fetal imaging informs better prenatal care decisions and reduces unnecessary interventions

The team has received a $3 million R01 federal grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue their research detailed here: How Advancing Fetal Cardiac MRI Capabilities is Improving Care.

“It's a really exciting time for us,” says Lorna Browne, MD, the physician co-principal investigator of the physician-scientist structured project. “We're going to be able to harness some amazing technologies — both hardware and software — to get even better images faster and help moms make some difficult decisions and avoid unnecessary changes in their prenatal care. With this grant, we’ll also bring in some new people to help us with image post-processing and developing AI tools to automate some parts of the process.”

Dr. Browne said one key advancement is being able to use an MRI-compatible Doppler ultrasound machine, which the research team developed in partnership with its manufacturer. This device synchronizes MRI imaging with the fetal heartbeat, giving the team a much more accurate picture of the baby’s heart. The grant that Dr. Browne and her team received will allow for the development of a new, improved type of ultrasound Doppler device that is more forgiving for fetal motion and will help produce even better images. These advancements could have broad applications for congenital heart disease diagnoses, but the team will first focus on using what they learn to better identify coarctation of the aorta.

“Our goal with this grant is really for the application of coarctation of the aorta,” says Dr. Browne. “It is a common disease but is often misdiagnosed prenatally. We want to be able to accurately diagnose a coarctation prenatally with a fetal cardiac MRI so that no patients have this diagnosis made who don't truly have the disease. At the moment, about 50% of patients diagnosed with coarctation of the aorta turn out not to have it. We think we can decrease that number dramatically and perhaps even eradicate the misdiagnosis of a coarctation.”