Gurgaon: Doctors at six Indian hospitals will soon be able to start using a artificial intelligence toolcalled Garbhini-GA2to improve the diagnosis of fetal anomalies and be precise gestational age for women who come for check-ups in later stages of their pregnancy.
Researchers at IIT Madras and Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI), who have developed the tool, say it will help reduce infant and maternal mortality rates, especially for women who are often unaware of pregnancies until the second trimester. THSTI-Faridabad is an institute under the department of biotechnology of the central government.
According to the National Family Health SurveyAround 30-40 per cent of pregnant women go for their first scans in the second trimester, meaning they don’t know their exact due date and doctors have to rely on the dates of the last menstrual period to determine an estimate.
Garbhini-GA2, which is installed in ultrasound machinesis intended to eliminate this by accurately diagnosing gestational age even in scans performed in the second trimester, its developers said.
“If you want to know the stage of pregnancy and due date, the most accurate estimate will come from the first trimester scan,” said Himanshu Sinha, associate professor, department of biotechnology, IIT-Madras.
“The main function of the tool is to provide accurate pregnancy dating, which is crucial for pregnancy care management. Accurate dating allows obstetricians to schedule necessary scans and tests at the right time, ensuring that potential complications are detected and managed effectively. It also helps determine the optimal delivery windowthereby reducing the risks associated with preterm and post-term births,” said Dr Shinjini Bhatnagar, principal investigator of the GARBH-Ini program and professor at THSTI-Faridabad.
For now, researchers are in talks with six hospitals in NCR, Assam, Gujarat, Telangana and Puducherry. The researchers want to study the impact of the tool in six hospitals and then implement it nationwide in collaboration with ultrasound manufacturers and hospitals.
“Currently, the team focuses on smaller hospitals, with the aim of minimizing issues of adverse birth outcomes where gestational dating is a major issue. The ultimate goal is to integrate it into ultrasound machines for effective clinical implementation,” said Dr Ramachandran Thiruvengadam, assistant professor at Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences, one of the collaborating institutions of the project.
The Garbh-Ini initiative, launched by the central government in May 2015 at Gurgaon Civil Hospital, initially involved a study of women who were followed from the early stages of pregnancy to delivery and postpartum. This cohort formed the basis of Garbhini-GA2, which was developed by feeding a large amount of data to a machine learning tool that can read ultrasounds.
