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Updated: Dec 23, 2025
State of the Art Cranial Ultrasound Imaging in Neonates
Published on: February 2, 2015
Ten-year trends in infant neuroimaging from US Neonatal Intensive Care Units
Veeral N Tolia1,2,3, Reese H Clark4, Dan L Ellsbury4
1Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA. Veeral.tolia@baylorhealth.edu.
Objective:
To identify patterns of neuroimaging (NI), including cranial ultrasounds (CUS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), among a large cohort of United States NICU infants.
Study Design:
The retrospective cohort study of the Pediatrix Clinical Data Warehouse for infants discharged between 2008 and 2017.
Results:
From the 863,863 infants during the study period, 204,197 (24%) had at least one NI study. CUS was the most common study (n = 189,190, 22%) followed by MRI (n = 37,107, 4%). From 2008 to 2017, the percentage of infants who underwent any NI decreased from 28 to 21% (p < 0.001) driven primarily by a reduction in CUS. MRI use for infants ≤33 weeks increased through 2015 and then decreased.
Conclusions:
Overall reductions in NI have been driven by decreased use of CUS in infants born at 31-33 weeks' gestational age. MRI use among preterm infants has been more dynamic with an initial rise and recent decrease.
