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Paris, February 23rd – In the past decades, mother and neonatal care during pregnancy have been centered on ultrasound exams. We are now entering a new era with AVATAR MEDICAL and the LUMIERE Foundation: parents can now discover their future baby in virtual reality, while practitioners can better understand the development of the fetus.
The LUMIERE Foundation, under the aegis of the France Foundation, was founded with the objective of researching normal neonatal development, organ functionality prior to birth and antenatal pathologies. Its first project was to create the LUMIERE Platform, an integrated clinical research and teaching unit based on the medical imaging of pregnant women.
AVATAR MEDICAL’s solution generates in real-time virtual reality representations of the fetus based on MRI images. This technology allows representation, interaction, and analysis of fetal MRI from raw images and offers the possibility to perform fetal morphometry. With AVATAR MEDICAL software the goal is to explore how the combined use of MRI and virtual reality can improve ultrasound-based diagnosis and identify new morphometric markers of disease.
The “avatar” is a great way for parents to start connecting with the baby but it also enables practitioners to easily monitor the development of the fetus. Located in the heart of a world-renowned institution on pediatric care, Necker hospital, the LUMIERE platform will give the possibility to multiple actors such as engineers, scientists, and health professionals to use this new technology on their research projects.
“Like many parents, the first time I saw my kids was through some blurry ultrasound images. I was more guessing than seeing. These new images are really incredible and I am really happy that we can provide this emotional connection between parents and their future newborn.” says Xavier Wartelle, CEO of AVATAR MEDICAL.
“Ultrasound and MRI, as practiced at LUMIERE, eventually allow us to get closer to the fetus, which we cannot usually see, touch, or examine. What we are developing tends to give a new vision of pregnancy to health professionals but also to parents to whom we offer another way to bond with their child to be,” says Pr Laurent Salomon, director of the LUMIERE platform.
