Artificial Intelligence and the second trimester of pregnancy: A literature survey

Abstract

Pregnancy is a wonderful period in every woman’s life. Every trimester comes with all sorts of emotions, good or bad. The second trimester is said to be the most pleasant one. Nevertheless, it comes with anxiety and stress. To eliminate these emotions, doctors perform a second trimester ultrasound. This is also called the second trimester morphology scan. This type of scan is important because it determines if the fetus is growing and developing at normal pace. The sonographer measures the baby’s size and weight, the fetal heart, brain, spine, skeleton, abdominal, pelvic, and thoracic organs. She/he also checks whether there are hard or soft genetic disorders markers, whether the amniotic fluid levels are normal or not, and determine the location of the placenta. All these verifications and estimations imply a good experience in fetal ultrasonography. Unfortunately, experienced sonographers are clustered in big city cities, and cannot be found in poor regions. In order for everybody to have access to premium fetal morphology ultrasounds, there is a need for artificial intelligence methods. Artificial Intelligence algorithms can signal possible anomalies, which an unexperienced sonographer might miss. The aim of this paper is to do a literature survey and present the state-of-the-art of the Artificial Intelligence applied in second trimester sonography.