Baby's birth captured in MRI movie for the first time

Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV

It's unlikely to be a comfortable place to deliver a baby, but now a video documents the first birth in an MRI machine. Christian Bamberg and a team from Charit? University Hospital in Berlin, Germany, announced the world first in December 2010, but the movie has only recently been released.

The video captures the active second stage of labour as the mother expels the fetus. The technique, called cinematic MRI, takes repeated images of the same slice of the body before joining them up to create an ultra-detailed video. It was recently turned on unborn twins for the first time to study a common complication where one fetus receives more of the blood supply and becomes much larger than the other.

By using MRI, the team was able to examine the relationship between the movement of the fetus and its position as it travels through the birth canal, which should help doctors better manage labour and delivery. In the future, the team also hopes to visualise the first stage of labour using the same technique, possibly using the videos to create virtual-reality computer training.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like to see a kung-fu fetus or watch a couple having sex in an MRI scanner.

Journal reference: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, DOI: 10.1016/j.ajog.2012.01.011

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