For infants born with congenital heart disease and some premature babies, necrotizing enterocolitis, a serious gastrointestinal problem, can pose a worrisome threat. Treatment is most effective when started early, but currently a diagnosis is confirmed only after symptoms appear, at which point substantial damage may already have occurred. What’s more, treatment can involve extended hospital stays or surgeries, and necrotizing enterocolitis can cause lifelong complications.

In a quest to detect NEC before symptoms appear, Danielle Gottlieb Sen, director of pediatric cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, and Hopkins biomedical engineering professor Youseph Yazdi have teamed up with MIT’s Ellen Roche to develop a noninvasive device that goes on a baby's belly to monitor intestinal ischemia, inadequate blood flow that is a known biomarker of the onset of NEC. The device, which will connect to bedside monitors, uses near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) sensors to continuously record, store and transmit data.

The team, which recently received funding from the Cohen Translational Engineering Fund at Johns Hopkins, is building NIRS sensors that account for differences in pediatric patient size, and they are mapping pediatric intestine and vascular beds to ensure monitoring specificity. Their work could serve as a platform to develop accurate NIRS sensors for others tissues and diseases.

The researchers plan to use the funding to build the device as well as obtain results to start the process of receiving device approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.