FPGT: An online system for customized fetal and pediatric growth tracking

Growth tracking is an important diagnostic tool in perinatal medicine, because of its simplicity, low cost and sensitivity to several pathologies. It assumes a critical relevance for assessing the fetal intrauterine wellbeing thanks to the possibilities of ultrasound imaging. While the tracking method is very well known, the population reshuffling pushes for more updated and customized reference growth curves able to meet the challenge of correct diagnoses posed by about 160 millions of newborns per year. In this perspective we developed a cloud-based online service for fetal and pediatric growth tracking and we populated it with all ethnic-specific curves known in literature. Moreover we integrated it with a system, based on optical character recognition, able to support health professionals to produce their own customized growth curves from collections of ultrasound images and to share them, while preserving anonymity. The paper discusses the motivations underlying the system, its structure and the first results of a test on the field.