Expecting parents — and their families — will now be able to see their unborn babies in virtual reality. Developed by a team of Brazilian researchers, the 3D models combine slices of MRI scans and ultrasound data to reconstruct the environment of the womb, including the fetus, placenta, and umbilical cord.
The project began ten years ago when a team led by Dr. Heron Werner Jr. looked into 3D-printing models of fetuses using ultrasound and MRI data. Their goal was to figuratively take the fetus out of the womb and examine its physical characteristics, from the external features like the size of the skull to internal structures like the respiratory tract. Using this technology, the researchers were able to noninvasively navigate the airway of a 28-week fetus. They’ve since developed the technology as a comprehensive VR experience, equipped with fetal heartbeats captured via ultrasound, which users can explore using a standard headset.
“I think that this technology will be good to better evaluate the fetus,” Werner told Digital Trends. “[And] it will be good to better evaluate multiple pregnancies.”
Werner says his team has recently used the technology to get a closer look at fetal tumors, which in some cases demand surgery before birth. VR offers physicians other angles to examine the tumors and another perspective to evaluate whether surgery is necessary.
“This kind of approach can facilitate the discussion with multidisciplinary team and also parents about some specific cases such as fetal tumors or external malformations,” Werner said.
The researchers have run a number of clinical experiments in Rio de Janeiro and will present their results at the annual Radiological Society of North America next week. Werner hopes to conduct more research in the coming year.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.