About us

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Imperial College London has international reputation for research in perinatal neurology and brain imaging, spanning over several decades. We were the first in the world to have a dedicated in-unit neonatal 3 Telsa MRI scanner.

We lead one of the largest clinical research programs in neonatal encephalopathy in the world. Neonatal encephalopathy, or brain injury related to 'birth asphyxia' is a devastating condition due to a presumed lack of oxygen and blood flow to the fetal brain, possibly around the time of birth. Pioneering research undertaken in the unit, along with many other researchers and collaborators in the UK and worldwide led to the establishment of brain cooling as the first effective therapy for neonatal encephalopathy. However, despite cooling therapy, almost half of the babies born with neonatal encephalopathy will have adverse outcomes.

Our current work is focussed on developing effective disease stratification tools for developing personalised neuroprotection in neonatal encephalopathy and evaluating these using quantitative MR spectroscopy biomarkers in a multi-country setting.

HELIX Trial Video