Amazing Images

June 29, 2004 4:40 AM

Amazing Images - the BBC has a series of 10 pictures of fetuses at various stages of developments. There's no information about how they were obtained, but they are pretty striking. I imagine they must have been taken with one of the new ultrasound techniques (which are apparently called 4D imaging now).
posted by Irontom (30 comments total)

They may not be human but there will certainly be large numbers of people who are wired up to relate to them as human. And all that that entails.
posted by jfuller at 4:50 AM on June 29, 2004

Ah, yes. Volumetric imaging. Lots of fun. Volsuite is a great package for playing with this data -- in this case, acquired almost certainly through ultrasound (since MRI's and CT scans don't work well for moving objects).
posted by effugas at 4:55 AM on June 29, 2004

Can they find the Loch Ness monster with this? Could they image the Titanic?
posted by pieoverdone at 5:09 AM on June 29, 2004

I'm sick of fetuses. If they're so precious and special, why are there so FRIGGING MANY OF THEM? They're more common than squirrels and much uglier.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:29 AM on June 29, 2004

Here are two of those ultrasounds for my girls.

We have a bunch of other pictures, but those are the ones we put up. It's amazing how early they started looking like themselves. That's weird, but I can't think of a better way to put it.

Here's a much larger gallery of such images at just about every week of gestation.
posted by bbrown at 5:38 AM on June 29, 2004

bbrown: surfed over the kids' photo pages -- beautiful babies that you have!

And re: the BBC pix -- haven't we seen photos like that before, like back in the 90s? Are these pictures "that" much better than others we've seen? I'm not sure that I understand the significance of these specific pictures.
posted by davidmsc at 5:56 AM on June 29, 2004

We got one of those too, although to be honest I was much more touched by the original ultrasound we went to; hearing my sons heartbeat for the first time and then seeing the little heart valves opening and closing was truly amazing.

The 4D is cool but there is some controvesy about it in some circles because it's perceived as taking ultrasound technicians out of the strictly medical field and into these 'vanity' type operations where they can make a lot more money giving parents little videos of their younguns at premium prices.

Cool though.
posted by zeoslap at 5:58 AM on June 29, 2004

Now *that* is cool. I showed these to my daughter (5), who agreed. I tried to explain to her how thrilled I was when I saw the first (much more lo-res) ultrasound image of her when she was around 20 weeks old. That's when I first fell in love with her. (She didn't get it.)
posted by Turtles all the way down at 6:34 AM on June 29, 2004

I can't wait till this technology gets built into a tshirt.

Say "hello" to my baby!
posted by rudyfink at 6:52 AM on June 29, 2004

They look pretty human to me, jfuller.
posted by DWRoelands at 7:02 AM on June 29, 2004

Drudgereport.com is currently featuring a story with these pics. The caption under the second image links to the set of 10 pics featured in this post. The full story is at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3846525.stm
posted by jwells at 7:20 AM on June 29, 2004

Metafilter: More common than ugly squirrels fetuses.
posted by Happydaz at 7:43 AM on June 29, 2004

I always thought that the "naked baby on the bear skin rug" was the most embarassing picture in the family photo album. Imagine these kids as teenagers when Mom hauls the album out: "And here's little Bobby when he was just a fetus." "AW, MOM!"
posted by SPrintF at 7:44 AM on June 29, 2004

Pretty neat stuff. The last ultrasound we had showed some good detail but nothing even close to this.

But then, come Friday, we won't need a machine to look at the baby.
posted by fenriq at 7:46 AM on June 29, 2004

Bah. They say babies don't smile once they're out of the womb for 4-6 weeks and I can tell you right now that's not true.

Many babies are actually smiling when they come out - must be all the endorphins! - and only stop when the doctor welcomes them to the world by turning them upside down and hitting them.

If that was MY first exposure to the world, I wouldn't smile for weeks, either.
posted by u.n. owen at 8:17 AM on June 29, 2004

awwwwwwwwwww

Now, this is a nice respite from all the piss and bile of the Iraq posts lately...
posted by mkultra at 8:24 AM on June 29, 2004

"They may not be human but there will certainly be large numbers of people who are wired up to relate to them as human." Say what? If not human, then what are they?
posted by aaronshaf at 8:34 AM on June 29, 2004

Am I any less human because I support the RU-486 pill?
posted by Keyser Soze at 8:41 AM on June 29, 2004

Say what? If not human, then what are they?

Potential humans?
posted by Jairus at 8:43 AM on June 29, 2004

These are cool. And good luck fenriq! :)
posted by dejah420 at 8:52 AM on June 29, 2004

haven't we seen photos like that before, like back in the 90s? Are these pictures "that" much better than others we've seen? I'm not sure that I understand the significance of these specific pictures

The photos I suspect you're thinking of were taken invasively by laparoscopic cameras thrust into the womb (or, for early stage photos, are of nonviable embryos and taken outside the womb in a full studio environment).

These were taken noninvasively by ultrasound, at rather less risk to the mother and fetus.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:05 AM on June 29, 2004

Fetuses encased in carbonite are cute?

Did you miss the part where Boba Fett turns them over to Jabba?
posted by srboisvert at 9:20 AM on June 29, 2004

srboisvert: That is kind of along the lines of what i was thinking when I saw them. When can we expect the photoshoppers to arrive offering to retouch the photos to give them nice life-like tones and shading? Can I get that with a little rouge and eyeliner?
posted by shotsy at 9:36 AM on June 29, 2004

I'm going to hell...
posted by mkultra at 10:14 AM on June 29, 2004

I know I got a thrill when I first saw their ultrasounds, but it's hard to get worked up over an image that you can't really make out. It was more of the thought that my daughter was in there.

The 3D ultrasound (I guess the fourth D happens when you've got video) showed my daughters in a way that a 2D never could. I got to see them moving their arms (that actually looked like arms) and I got to see them yawning.

It cost $80 per kid, but it was worth it. We had the both families there and I think they appreciated it too. It was like a sneak peek at my daughters (and it was nice to verify that we weren't getting a gender surprise, too).
posted by bbrown at 10:48 AM on June 29, 2004

mkultra: that is beauuuuutiful!
posted by shotsy at 11:17 AM on June 29, 2004

...If a picture is a '2D' ultrasound, wouldn't that make the video be a 3D rendering, technically? 2D + Time = 3D?
posted by Jairus at 11:54 AM on June 29, 2004

$80? I would have gladly paid that had it been available.

Maybe it is available here, but if it is, noone volunteered any info about it, and I don't know anyone who has had it done. All of our and our friends' "womb pictures" look like sonar readings from a submarine.

"See, that's his head"
"Uh, ok. If you say so"
posted by Ynoxas at 12:11 PM on June 29, 2004

Ultrasounds affect the fetus. Whether good or bad, it may harm the brain, and having one done without medical cause should be banned until there is more research.

"We believe that a positive association between prenatal ultrasound scanning and left handedness, if it is causal, could result from lesions to the left or to both hemispheres."

"How ultrasound could affect the brain is still a mystery though. Kieler suspects that a process called cavitation - where small bubbles in the body fluids vibrate in the ultrasonic waves - could influence brain development."
posted by Feisty at 1:28 PM on June 29, 2004

Have a baby (quicktime)
13.7mb or 6mb
posted by quiet at 4:19 PM on June 29, 2004