Prenatal Brain Scans for Autism Diagnosis

Significant structural brain differences suggestive of autism can be now traced at 25 weeks of gestation using prenatal brain scans.

Prenatal MRI scans of children help identify autism-associated brain differences as per a study to be presented at the American Association for Anatomy annual meeting during the Experimental Biology (EB) 2022 meeting, in Philadelphia.

Nearly 1 in 68 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) — a complex neurodevelopmental disorder.

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“Earlier detection means better treatment. Our results suggest that an increased volume of the insular lobe (deep brain region for perceptual awareness, social behavior and decision-making) may be a strong prenatal MRI (at 25 weeks’ gestation) biomarker that could predict the emergence of ASD later in life,” says Alpen Ortug, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, first author of the study.

“Given that many genetic and environmental factors could affect the emergence of ASD starting in the fetal stages, it is ideal to identify the earliest signature of brain abnormalities in prospective autism patients. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to semi-automatically segment the brain regions in the prenatal stage in patients who are diagnosed with autism later and compare different groups of controls,” says Ortug.

Source-Medindia

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TOP INSIGHT

Significant structural brain differences suggestive of autism can be now traced at 25 weeks of gestation using prenatal brain scans, mounting to the evidence of early development of autism.