Prenatal diagnosis of tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia using: Fetal Intelligent Navigation Echocardiography (FINE)

Abstract

Tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia, a severe form of tetralogy of Fallot, is characterized by the absence of flow from the right ventricle to the pulmonary arteries. This cardiac abnormality is challenging and complex due to its many different anatomic variants. The main source of variability is the pulmonary artery anatomy, ranging from well-formed, confluent pulmonary artery branches to completely absent native pulmonary arteries replaced by major aorto-pulmonary collateral arteries (MAPCAs) that provide all of the pulmonary blood flow. Since the four-chamber view is usually normal on prenatal sonography, the diagnosis may be missed unless additional cardiac views are studied. Fetal Intelligent Navigation Echocardiography (FINE) is a novel method developed recently that allows automatic generation of nine standard fetal echocardiography views in normal hearts by applying "intelligent navigation" technology to spatiotemporal image correlation volume datasets. We report herein for the first time, two different cases of tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia having variable sources of pulmonary blood flow in which the prenatal diagnosis was made successfully using the FINE method. Virtual Intelligent Sonographer Assistance (VIS-Assistance^®) and automatic labeling (both features of FINE) were very helpful in making such diagnosis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported, in part, by the Perinatology Research Branch, Division of Intramural Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD, NIH, DHHS; and in part, with Federal funds from NICHD, NIH under Contract No. HHSN275201300006C.