Neonatal neuroimaging: from research to bedside practice

Neonatal neuroimaging is essential in research and clinical practice, offering important insights into brain development and neurologic injury mechanisms. Visualizing the brain enables researchers and clinicians to improve neonatal care and parental counselling through better diagnosis and prognostication of disease. Common neuroimaging modalities used in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are cranial ultrasonography (cUS) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Between these modalities, conventional MRI provides the optimal image resolution and detail about the developing brain, while advanced MRI techniques allow for the evaluation of tissue microstructure and functional networks. Over the last two decades, medical imaging techniques using brain MRI have rapidly progressed, and these advances have facilitated high-quality extraction of quantitative features as well as the implementation of novel devices for use in neurological disorders. Major advancements encompass the use of low-field dedicated MRI systems within the NICU and trials of ultralow-field portable MRI systems at the bedside. Additionally, higher-field magnets are utilized to enhance image quality, and ultrafast brain MRI is employed to decrease image acquisition time. Furthermore, the implementation of advanced MRI sequences, the application of machine learning algorithms, multimodal neuroimaging techniques, motion correction techniques, and novel modalities are used to visualize pathologies that are not visible to the human eye. In this narrative review, we will discuss the fundamentals of these neuroimaging modalities, and their clinical applications to explore the present landscape of neonatal neuroimaging from bench to bedside.