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The fetal magnetocardiography (fMCG) device looks, in the words of one dad, “like R2-D2 hanging from the ceiling.” But when gently pressed against a pregnant woman’s belly, this groundbreaking tool can do something more amazing than any movie robot: it records the natural magnetic signals that come from the fetal heart rhythm, improving diagnosis and guiding treatment for heart arrhythmias before a baby is even born. The safe, non-invasive procedure could also prevent stillbirths. It’s estimated that roughly 10 percent of unexplained stillbirths may be due to cardiac causes. Between 3 to 10 percent of stillbirths involve inherited conditions that affect the rhythm of the heart. “And those conditions can’t be diagnosed by ultrasound,” notes Janette Strasburger, MD, a fetal electrophysiologist and researcher with the Herma Heart Institute at Children’s Wisconsin. “For 40 years, ultrasound has been the mainstay of all of our diagnoses, and it’s absolutely great for structural defects, but not as good for diagnosing arrhythmias. Until fMCG came along, fetal ultrasound was like a puzzle with many missing pieces.”
preventing stillbirths through better fetal heart monitoring special editorial submitted by children's wisconsin 24
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That’s why Strasburger and Ronald Wakai, PhD, a professor of medical physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have spent years developing fMCG for clinical use. Over the past two decades, they have used fMCG to study more than 900 fetuses, refining how to assess cardiac rhythm patterns in utero. “The premise behind our work is that if we know what a baby has, we usually know how to treat it,” Strasburger says.
