Handheld Optical Device Screens for Early Necrotizing Enterocolitis in Preterm Infants

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a sudden, rapidly progressive intestinal disease of premature infants that can lead to sepsis, surgery, and death. Clinicians struggle to recognize NEC at its earliest stages before damage becomes visible on imaging. Early identification could enable timely medical therapy and reduce operative risk. To help address this challenge, investigators have developed a noninvasive optical device to screen preterm infants for early signs of NEC.

Broadband optical spectroscopy (BOS) was developed at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in collaboration with a biomedical engineering laboratory at Northwestern University. The handheld device is designed for bedside use in the neonatal intensive care unit. The first-in-human study reporting its clinical use has been published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery. The technology aims to detect NEC earlier than radiography can.

The BOS probe is placed gently on the infant’s abdomen. It measures infrared light reflected from the intestines and analyzes spectral signatures for changes in color that surgeons recognize as indicative of threatened intestinal tissue in NEC. The assessment is completed within about two minutes and does not expose infants to pain or radiation.

In the initial clinical evaluation, investigators tested BOS in 96 premature infants who were younger than 36 weeks’ gestation. Infants with congenital cardiac conditions or abdominal wall defects were excluded. The study found that BOS was safe and feasible in this population and produced detectable signal changes in infants with NEC. The findings support further validation of BOS as a screening modality to identify earlier stages of disease, when antibiotic therapy may still be effective.

“Our results show that BOS is a safe and feasible technology that produced detectable signal changes in premature infants with NEC. These findings suggest that BOS is a promising and potentially groundbreaking modality for screening and early detection of NEC,” said Seth Goldstein, MD, MPhil, pediatric general and thoracic surgeon at Lurie Children’s and Associate Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Related Links
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine