Foetuses in 3D

Parents-to-be might soon wear 3D glasses in the ultrasound lab to see their developing foetuses in the womb, according to researchers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering.

The same Duke team that first developed real-time, three-dimensional ultrasound imaging says it has now modified the commercial version of the scanner to produce an even more realistic perception of depth. Paired images seem to pop out of the screen when viewed with the special glasses.

The researchers created an updated version of the image-viewing software found on clinical ultrasound scanners, making it possible to achieve a stereo display with no additional hardware.

‘To our knowledge, this is the first time it's been made possible to display real-time stereo image pairs on a clinical scanner,’ said Stephen Smith, a professor of biomedical engineering at Duke. ‘We believe all 3D scanners could be modified in this way with only minor software changes.’