A team effort to develop the world’s first cot-side functional neuroimaging technology to speedily detect brain injuries including cerebral palsy in newborn babies is being spearheaded in Cambridge.

The three-year Fast UltraSound Imaging with Optics in the Newborn (fUSiON) study, involving high-risk infants, is due start at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH). If the study is successful, the wearable device, which fits like a swimming cap, could become a common in every UK hospital.

Robinson Senior Member, Professor Topun Austin is a consultant neonatologist and director of the Evelyn Perinatal Imaging Centre. He is also the Life Course Theme Lead for the Brain Injury HRC, exploring brain treatments at the extremes of life – young and old.

He explained:

"The fUSiON Study aims to develop and demonstrate a system for the cot-side assessment of brain activity in newborn infants and is currently the first of its kind in the world.

We have spent 12 months successfully proving the concept with the help of healthy and premature babies, and will now move on to the second phase, which focuses on those babies considered to be at higher risk of brain damage.

Understanding and looking at brain activity patterns in both term and preterm infants can help us identify infants most vulnerable to injury at an early stage".

Find out more here and here