Fetal brain mapping

Advances in fast 2D MRI have led to its growing clinical use in un-sedated fetal brain studies, as a tool for challenging neurodevelopmental cases. The availability of this 2D data has motivated new engineering developments that combine fast multi-slice MRI scans with computer vision techniques to provide a route to full 3D fetal brain image formation in a significant fraction of imaging studies. Critically, this promises a route to studying early human brain development with realistic populations, rather than in a fraction of individuals where motion does not occur. This article will briefly review the problem of slice motion estimation, techniques for 3D image reconstruction and look at new methods that have been developed to model and segment early developing tissue zones within the human fetal brain. Finally, a brief review covering some of the early applications of these methods to study fetal brain growth is included.