Pre- and post-operative MRI examines fetal brain growth in spina bifida aperta, suggesting implications for surgical planning.
Motivation: It is important to understand fetal brain development in fetuses impacted by spina bifida aperta to aid in prenatal planning. Goal(s): We aim to identify imaging biomarkers that can potentially aid in the decision-making process for in utero spinal lesion closure surgery and discover the impact of disease characteristics on regional fetal brain growth. Approach: Pre- and post-operative fetal brain MRIs were acquired, and regional fetal brain growth pre- and post-operatively were compared to lesion type and Chiari II hindbrain herniation level in 96 patients. Results: Relationships between the cerebellum, brainstem and eCSF volumes were found with lesion type and hindbrain herniation level. Impact: Longitudinal fetal brain MRI of spina bifida patients has the potential to expand our knowledge of fetal brain development in neural tube disorders.
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Payette et al. (2025) studied this question.
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