Cerebral palsy after very preterm birth - an imaging perspective

Neonatal brain imaging undoubtedly can provide the most accurate information from which to determine whether cerebral palsy is likely to affect an individual infant born preterm. The sensitivity and specificity of that information is different between cranial ultrasound and MRI, depending on what approaches and sequences are used and the timing of the examinations. In this chapter we highlight the changing incidence of different patterns of brain injury in the preterm newborn and present a comparison of cranial ultrasound and MRI for predicting cerebral palsy in preterm infants affected by the commoner intracranial pathologies.