The
ultrasonologist can now assess the size, shape, and function of the fetal heart
in less than 3 minutes with the GE Healthcare new fetalHQ software. Evaluating
fetal heart and ruling out congenital heart anomalies is complicated at 18-20
weeks. This condition is not uncommon and affects one out of every 110 babies
around the world.
At this
gestational age, the fetal heart is exceptionally complex, just the size of a
grape and the rate is near twice the adult heart rate. GE new tool – fetalHQ
runs on GE Healthcare’s Voluson ultrasound systems and is the first tool to
simultaneously examine the size, shape, and function of the fetal heart.
fetalHQ is
the brainchild of Greggory DeVore, M.D., a specialist in maternal-fetal
medicine at Huntington Hospital, Pasadena, California. He got inspired to
develop the software from another software that used speckle tracking analysis
to map the motion of tissues in the heart. This software was regularly used by
adult and pediatric cardiologist to assess the function of the heart.
Dr. DeVore
installed the software and reprogrammed it to visualize the fetal heart in 24
segments and map it in a way that was never done earlier.
“This was
the genesis of the creativity behind using this software,” DeVore said. “From
this, we made several measurements of the heart’s size, shape, and
contractility – or how it’s squeezing. We immediately got to work and published
13 peer-reviewed articles that described the clinical value of this software.”
Here is a
video showing the fetalHQ‘s automatic delineation of the fetal heart’s shape
