Thermal Imaging for Increasing the Diagnostic Accuracy in Fetal Hypoxia: Concept and Practice Suggestions
We developed a method for diagnosing fetal cerebral hypoxia with a thermal imaging camera. The method is based on the following detected principle: hypoxia and ischemia reduce the intensity of thermal radiation from tissues. Infrared thermography was perf
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Abstract We developed a method for diagnosing fetal cerebral hypoxia with a thermal imaging camera. The method is based on the following detected principle: hypoxia and ischemia reduce the intensity of thermal radiation from tissues. Infrared thermography was performed in 35 pregnant women with a ThermoTracer TH9100XX thermal imaging camera (NEC, USA) in the temperature range of 26– 36 °C. The research results showed that the local temperature of the skin in the parietal head part in live fetuses during delivery and immediately after birth ranged from 31.6 to 36.1 °C. It is found that normally an area of local hyperthermia might be observed on the top of the fetal head, and the temperature in this area might be 0.5–4.0 °C more than the temperature of the areas close to it. This area is located above the central suture of the skull, and has oblong shape. Monitoring the dynamics of temperature in the central suture allows us to evaluate the oxygen supply to fetal brain cortex during delivery. In this context, if the temperature drop areas are not observed in fetal head skin during his passing through the birth canals, it indicates the possibility of giving birth to a healthy child. In its turn, the occurrence of local hypothermia over the central suture of the skull indicates the hypoxic and ischemic damage to the fetal brain cortex and requires immediate hyper-oxygenation of the fetus blood. To increase the oxygen delivery to the fetus, we suggested giving the mother oxygen through a face mask and instruct her to breathe it in until “feeling drunk”. We also suggest putting oxygen face mask on the fetus inside the mother’s womb for artificial intrauterine ventilation of fetus lungs with breathing gas. In addition, in order to prevent fetal brain cortex cells from dying from hypoxia we suggested cooling the fetal head as soon as it comes out of the birth canal. We also propose to document the child health status in the final stage of childbirth by recording the dynamics of local temperature in the head skin area over the gap between the parietal skull bones with infrared thermography.
Keywords Physiological birth Intrauterine hypoxia nostics Newborn Obstetric care
Thermal imaging diag-
N.A. Urakova A.L. Urakov (&) Institute of Mechanics, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Izhevsk, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 E.Y.K. Ng and M. Etehadtavakol (eds.), Application of Infrared to Biomedical Sciences, Series in BioEngineering, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3147-2_16
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N.A. Urakova and A.L. Urakov
1 Introduction Hypoxia during childbirth is a major cause of perinatal damage to the cerebral cortex and is a leader in morbidity, disability and mortality rates in infants in the neonatal period [1]. Therefore, the threat of intrauterine fetal hypoxia in pregnancy and childbirth should be of great concern to obstetricians and gynecologists [2]. However, this problem remains unsolved, and the doctors lack safe methods for the diagnosis and monitoring of intr
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