The Challenge

Global neonatal mortality remains high at 22/1000 live births. The majority of these deaths occur due to the lack of accurate gestational calculation and this results in babies being born at an unknown gestation. Consequently, premature babies are not identified in a timely fashion to allow simple, low cost interventions such as avoidance of hypothermia, breast feeding support and access to more advanced.

State of the art

Clinical techniques for gestational age calculation include fetal ultrasound and manual clinical assessment, such as the Ballard Score [1]. However, these techniques are not always available (ultrasound machines are expensive and require trained users) or reliable (manual scores can be subjective and require significant training and expertise).

Emerging evidence suggests that gestational age can be calculated postnatally by measuring the newborn foot length and comparing to population appropriate charts [2]. However, when used on their own, the specificity and sensitivity are still below acceptable limits to allow universal adoption [3,4].

Our solution

We propose a smart-phone based tool to automatically and accurately determine gestational age of the newborn. We aim to estimate the gestational age of newborn babies to within 1 week of its actual gestation using photographs from their faces, ears and feet and simple anthropometric measures, such as weight and sex.

The Gestational Age Estimation Tool involves an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Nottingham, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The team will combine their expertise in Neonatal Medicine and Computer Vision to develop and deploy such solution.

References

  1. Ballard JL et al. New Ballard Score, expanded to include extremely premature infants. 1991 Paediatr; 119(3):417-23.
  2. Marchant T et al. Measuring newborn foot length to identify small babies in need of extra care: a cross sectional hospital based study with community follow-up in Tanzania. 2010; BMC Public Health; Oct 19; 10.624.
  3. Taylor RA et al. The external Ballard examination does not accurately assess the gestational age of infants born at home in a rural community of The Gambia. 2010 Ann Trop Paediatr; 30(3):197-204.
  4. Elizabeth NL et al. Determining an anthropometric surrogate measure for identifying low birth weight babies in Uganda: a hospital-based cross sectional study. 2013 BMC Pediatr; Apr 12 13:54.