Anthropomorphic motion phantom of the human fetus

胎儿磁共振成像（MRI）是准确诊断胎儿异常的标准方法。胎儿MRI的诊断准确性目前受到由母胎运动引起的伪影的限制，在其他来源中，这些伪影扭曲和降低了图像，抑制了其诊断效用。结果是，大多数胎儿MRI扫描需要重复多达4次，每个病人，直到获得一个干净的图像。对于加拿大的医疗保健系统来说，这种重复是费时又费钱的。它延误了治疗，增加了胎儿出生时患有终身疾病的风险，影响了他们的生活质量，需要持续昂贵的医疗护理。我们迫切需要开发胎儿MRI序列和算法，以完全避免和消除当前的伪影。然而，这样的开发也需要充分和重复的测试，这是极其耗时和昂贵的人类参与者。我们的解决方案是一种装置（又名幻影），它可以在怀孕的腹部移动，看起来像人类胎儿。它放弃了对人类志愿者进行技术开发的需要，允许在一次会议中尽可能频繁地进行准确的重复测试。它有望以目前成本的一小部分加快技术开发，同时最大限度地减少重复扫描的需要。总之，胎儿幻影将大大降低技术开发的成本以及用MRI诊断胎儿的成本，从而彻底改变胎儿MRI领域和胎儿保健。

Fetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the standard modality for accurately diagnosing fetal abnormalities. Diagnostic accuracy of fetal MRI is currently limited by artifacts caused by maternal-fetal motion, among other sources, which distort and degrade the images, inhibiting their diagnostic utility. The result is that most fetal MRI scans need to be repeated up to 4 times per patient until a clean image is obtained. This repetition is time and cost consuming for the Canadian health care system. It delays treatments, and increases the risk of fetuses being born with life-long disorders that impact their quality of life and require constant costly medical care. We urgently need fetal MRI sequences and algorithms to be developed to altogether avoid and remove the current artifacts. However, such development also requires ample and repeated testing, which is extremely time consuming and costly to do with human participants. Our solution is a device (aka phantom) that moves and looks like the human fetus within the pregnant abdomen. It forgoes the need for human volunteers for technical development, allowing to do accurate repeated testing as often and for as long as needed in one session. It promises to expedite technical development at a fraction of the current cost, while minimizing the need for repeated scans. Taken together, the fetal phantom will drastically cut down the cost of technical development as well as the cost of fetal diagnosis with MRI, thereby revolutionizing the fetal MRI field and fetal healthcare.