Newborn Face and Foot Analysis to Determine Gestational Age

Don Sharkey of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom will develop a software-based analysis tool to automatically calculate gestational age from simple videos of newborn faces and feet. Knowing the gestational age, particularly for babies born preterm, is critical for ensuring their healthy development. However, current dating procedures are expensive and/or require trained personnel, and as such are often unavailable in low-middle income countries. They will create a face and foot video database of newborns with known gestational ages of between 23 and 42 weeks, and use automated methods to extract specific features and generate a gestational algorithm. This algorithm will then be validated in a separate group of newborns.