Case C: Novel Volumetric Biomarkers for First Trimester Pregnancies Assessed using 3D Ultrasound

Work Packages: WP1, WP3

Background: Most congenital anomalies are present during the first trimester, but missed during routine first-trimester scans. One of the reasons for this, is that following current guidelines only a limited number of 2D standard planes are acquired to monitor growth and development of the fetus. Standard planes are manually found and annotated by a trained sonographer in order to measure a specific anatomical structure. Both plane extraction and fetal measurements is time-consuming, operator dependent and does not benefit from existing technology which can capture 3D images of the fetus.

Objective: 3D ultrasound provides more spatial information and allows multiple measurements to be extracted simultaneously. Thus, we propose to develop novel, robust, failure-aware and resource-efficient AI methods to automatically perform organ, landmark and body-part segmentation and from 3D ultrasound scans to derive quantitative biomarkers for monitoring growth and development.