Enhancing the Ultrasound-Based Prenatal Diagnosis of Congenital Heart Defects

Fetal ultrasound is typically first performed at 18 weeks' gestation — and when a routine survey reveals congenital heart defects, confirmatory echocardiography is done. However, ultrasound cannot always detect the associated abnormal vascular structures. To assess whether adjunctive fetal MRI with 3D image reconstruction using motion-correction algorithms enhances the diagnosis of congenital heart defects detected by ultrasound, U.K. investigators performed fetal thoracic MRI in 85 pregnancies with known or suspected defects.

For identifying key vascular structures, MRI with 3D image reconstruction outperformed 2D MRI imaging. In addition, MRI with 3D reconstruction identified significant fetal vascular abnormalities undetected by fetal ech…