Neonatal Cranial Ultrasonography for Measuring Brain Volumes of Very Low Birth Weight Infants

Neonatal cranial ultrasound (US) remains the method of choice to detect brain injury in high risk preterm infants on neonatal intensive care units (NICU). It is a non-invasive, inexpensive bedside tool and examinations can be repeated as often as necessary without major disturbance of vulnerable infants. The anterior and posterior fontanelles from excellent acoustic windows to examine the deep midline and periventricular regions of the brain.Some data demonstrated that cerebral palsy can be accurately predicted with US. However, cranial US is not very suitable for investigating cortical regions or structures in the posterior fossa. There is limited data for very preterm infants.The investigators aimed to measure ventricular index, cranial height, biparietal diameter and calculate brain volume in a huge number of infants.