Smartphone videos of your baby could help detect cerebral palsy

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-02-23 10:20

Australia; VIC

Photo by Gema Saputera on Unsplash

Those cute videos you have on your phone of your baby squirming and rolling could be used to help detect cerebral palsy, according to new Australian research. Cerebral palsy is the most common cause of physical disability in childhood, and while early diagnosis is crucial, screening programs are limited by the availability of trained assessors. To solve this problem, the researchers trained an AI using over 500 smartphone videos of babies aged 12 to 18 weeks, to assess a baby's movement and pick up indications of cerebral palsy. The algorithm was able to pick up cases of cerebral palsy 76% of the time.

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Research PLOS, Web page Please link to the article in online versions of your report

Journal/
conference: PLOS Digital Health

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI), The University of Melbourne

Funder: This work was supported by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (Clinician Scientist Fellowship to EP), Rebecca L Cooper Medical Research Foundation (PG2019421 to GB), National Health and Medical Research Council Investigator Grant (1194497 to GB; 2016390 to JC), NVIDIA Corporation Hardware Grant program and The Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, Melbourne.

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