The placenta is one of the most vital organs when a woman is pregnant. If it’s not working correctly, the consequences can be dire: Children may experience stunted growth and neurological disorders, and their mothers are at increased risk of blood conditions like preeclampsia, which can impair kidney and liver function. Unfortunately, assessing placental health is difficult because of the limited information that can be gleaned from imaging. Traditional ultrasounds are cheap, portable, and easy to perform, but they can’t always capture enough detail. This has spurred researchers to explore the potential of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Even with MRIs, though, the curved surface of the uterus makes images difficult to interpret. This problem got the attention of a team of researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), who wondered whether the placenta’s scrunched shape could be flattened out using some fancy geometry. Next month they’re publishing Continue reading Using algorithms to build a map of the placenta→