Bacterial meningitis is an awful disease and diagnosing it in tiny children can be traumatic even for the clinical staff. That’s because babies only weeks old have to undergo lumbar punctures in order to sample their cerebrospinal fluid. Since the anatomy in patients that size is so small, repeat punctures are often performed before a proper sample is drawn. Now a new approach that relies on ultrasound may soon lead to a noninvasive bacterial meningitis test, avoiding spinal taps altogether.
A team of researchers from Spain and UK have developed a special ultrasound device that is placed above the fontanelle, the soft tissue area that exists in newborns before the cranial bones come together and fuse. Since spinal fluid is present within the fontanelle, evaluating its nature can point to the existence of a bacterial infection. The researchers developed a computer algorithm that processes the imaging data obtained from the ultrasound device tuned to focus on the cerebrospinal fluid, and offers an evaluation of whether an infection is present. The team tested the technology on infected animal tissue samples, as well as on a few real human babies, concluding that this technique may very well make spinal taps obsolete when evaluating small children for bacterial meningitis.
Project page: Team Lumbar…
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