The Assessment of Fetal Neurobehavior with Four-dimensional Ultrasound: The Kurjak Antenatal Neurodevelopmental Test

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fetal neurology is an evolving field in prenatal diagnosis and fetal medicine with great interest. The identification and diagnosis of brain damage prenatally has been a great challenge in obstetrics for many years and early identification of this damage would have implications on the perinatal management and is of great importance in cases of medical litigation. Defining normal and abnormal fetal neurological function in utero in order to better predict antenatally which fetuses are at risk for adverse neurological outcome still is under investigation. Several attempts have been made in the past to form a system that could detect fetuses with compromised central nervous system (CNS) function or brain impairement. Assessment of fetal behavior gave a promising opportunity to understand the hidden function of the developmental pathway of the fetal CNS. The assessment of normal neurobehavioral development by fourdimensional (4D) ultrasound gave the opportunity to investigate functional characteristics of the fetus that could predict neurological developmental dysfunction. These series of studies lead to the formation of Kurjak's antenatal neurodevelopmental test (KANET). KANET combines the assessment of fetal behavior, general movements and three out of four signs that have been postnatally considered as symptoms of possible neurodevelopmental impairment (neurological thumb, overlapping sutures and small head circumference). Assessment of fetal behavior by 4D ultrasound and application of KANET scoring test has been recently published in several journals and summarized results are presented in this review How to cite this article Antsaklis P, Antsaklis A. The Assessment of Fetal Neurobehavior with Four-dimensional Ultrasound: The Kurjak Antenatal Neurodevelopmental Test. Donald School J Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol 2012;6(4):362-375.