3D Ultrasound for Blind Parents: A Touch of Innovation!
Well, here’s something to make you go “Wow!” You thought the days of using your imagination to picture your future kid looking like a mix between a potato and an alien were behind you, didn’t you? Think again! Thanks to a groundbreaking clinic near Dieppe, blind or visually impaired parents can now get a sneak peek at their child’s face using 3D printing. Magic? Perhaps! But let’s not forget—there’s science behind the curtain too!
The Wonderful World of Ultrasound – The Unseen Experience
So, here we are in the age of technology, and having an ultrasound is as normal as ordering a pizza. The doctor shoves the jelly on your belly, and bam! A flickering image appears on the screen. But what if you can’t see that image? You might as well be looking at a blank wall! Well, my visually impaired friends, cheer up! At the Mégival clinic in Saint-Aubin-sur-Scie, they offer haptic ultrasound—a fancy term that could easily be a superhero’s power! Imagine molding a 3D image of your fetus’s face. Talk about giving the baby a head start on making their first impression!
Can You Hear Me Now? Touching Experience Ahead!
Now, let’s get to the nitty-gritty. This isn’t your usual ultrasound. “The baby must be well positioned,” says Cédric De Assunçao Raposo, a midwife sonographer. Of course, because if the little one decides to play hide and seek with its arm in front of its face, you might end up with a 3D masterpiece that looks more like a Muppet than a human. And if that doesn’t sound like a bizarre audition for the next kids’ TV show, I don’t know what does!
“The principle is to disseminate this information so that patients are aware and say to themselves, ‘We can do it, we can experience this too, us, with this disability!’” – Cédric De Assunçao Raposo
Isn’t it simply perfect? If you’re blind, why should you be left out of the magical experience of feeling your baby’s face—well, at least the 3D version of it? And isn’t that what parenthood is all about? Ensuring you can brag about your child’s features to everyone, even if the person next to you can’t quite tell what they’re looking at?
From File to Face: The 3D Printing Adventure!
Once you’ve navigated the minefield of ultrasound positioning, it’s time for some patience. The clinic sends that precious digital file off to a specialized company, Normandy Ecospace, where magic happens—or as they call it, 3D printing. Imagine the technical team going, “Alright, let’s take this digital blob and make it look like a human being!”
Ryan Gillé, the technical wizard behind the printing process, assures us, “You have to analyze it completely, check if there are holes in the mesh and fill them.” It sounds like they’re not just 3D printing faces; they’re fixing all the tiny imperfections too—making sure the future baby doesn’t look like they just came out from a blender!
Clocking in for Baby’s Big Reveal
Now, hold onto your hats because printing that little one’s face takes an average of five hours. Five hours! That’s longer than a serious meeting about the office coffee machine! But the wait is worth it, as it gives future parents a tangible connection to the baby they’re carrying.
The Bottom Line: Touching the Future Together!
In this day and age, everyone deserves to feel included. And thanks to this brilliant innovation, visually impaired parents can now touch and interact with the reality of parenthood, breaking down barriers one 3D face at a time. So here’s to the parents who dare to reach out and touch the future—two thumbs up and a cheeky smile!
Now, if only they could 3D print babysitting services, we’d be golden!
It is always a highly anticipated moment for future parents: the ultrasound, where you can discover the face of your future child. A step previously inaccessible to blind or visually impaired people. A clinic near Dieppe now offers a real innovation to fill this gap: 3D printing!
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There is magic in the air. That of the appointment with the gynecologist to discover, on a screen, the face of your future child. Until now, visually impaired people could only imagine this magic. At the Mégival clinic in Saint-Aubin-sur-Scie, near Dieppe, there is a solution: haptic ultrasound, a three-dimensional molding of the face of a fetus… Dive into the future!
Watch this report by G. Archiapati and S. L’Hôte:
duration of video: 00h01mn57s
Discover your future baby thanks to 3D for visually impaired parents. • ©France 3 Normandy
Thanks to touch, future blind or visually impaired parents can guess the features of their unborn child… All this from an ordinary ultrasound, in the context of a pregnancy, even if it takes everything even meet certain conditions to ensure optimal results.
“The baby must be well positioned, we must have a sufficient quantity of amniotic fluid around the baby to pass our cursors, the child must not have his arm in front of the face, otherwise it can place areas of shadow right in the middle and we won’t necessarily have a good image“, list Cédric De Assunçao Raposo, midwife sonographer.
The principle is to disseminate this information so that patients are aware and say to themselves “we can do it, we can experience this too, us, with this disability”.
Cedric De Assuncao Raposo
at France 3 Normandy
The technique was initiated by two French doctors. It has existed for five years but is still very little known by the public concerned. In Saint-Aubin-sur-Scie, only one woman suffering from blindness requested it.
However, the specificity can easily be implemented by medical teams. “What’s easy is that everyone, all people who do obstetric ultrasounds as part of monitoring a pregnancy can do it!“, assures Cédric De Assunçao Raposo.
Once the ultrasound stage has passed, the future parents still need a few hours of patience before discovering their baby’s face. 3D printing is done in Arques-la-Bataille, on the premises of Normandy Ecospace, a specialized company.
The clinic’s obstetrics department first sends the digital ultrasound file. It is then necessary to remove the noise – therefore, remove all the unwanted parts of the image, to obtain a result as close to reality as possible.
“The goal is really to recover as many facets as possible to obtain an exact geometry of the partexplains Ryan Gillé, technical director of Normandy Ecospace. You have to analyze it completely, check if there are holes in the mesh and fill them by smoothing the part.“
Printing the future baby’s face takes an average of five hours. A welcome initiative to help visually impaired people to fully plan for the start of their parenthood.
