3d Computer-Assisted Analysis and Scanning Electron Microscopy in the Morphological Study of Fetal Nuchal Translucency

Abstract

Nuchal tanslucency (NT) is an echo-free area detectable by ultrasound in human fetus at 9-14 weeks of gestational age, at the level of the soft tissues of the nuchal region.The 3D morphological features of a cavity corresponding to NT were examined directly in a specimen of human fetus, by computer-assisted methods and compared with previous findings obatained by scannin electron microscope. In order to reconstruct the 3D morphology of NT cavity, 66 serial sagittal sections of a human fetus (11 weeks of gestational age, C-R L: 48 mm) were digitalized, processed by Adobe Photoshop 4.0 to enhance contrast and detect edges, rotated into alignment based on fiducial points and analysed by NIH Image 1.61 software for Macintosh.These images were utilized to create a stack and to obtain new two-dimensional images corresponding to different sectional planes.This methods allowed to describe the fetal cavity, that shows spatial relationships and morphological characters of an enlarged limph sac.