Welcome back to Beyond the Patterns.

So today I have the great pleasure to announce an invited presentation by Farah Diba.

She is from the University of British Columbia and at the time when she was giving the presentation

she was a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering department at the University

of British Columbia where she is advised by Dr Robert Rowling.

Farah's research interests are in the field of medical imaging, where focus on placental

tissue characterization using quantitative ultrasound.

Farah is a recipient of the Schlumberger Faculty for Future Fellowship and the 2020 Microsoft

Research Dissettation Grant.

She was also nominated as one of the Rising Stars 2020 by Berkeley EECS.

And now we have her here where she is giving a presentation entitled Understanding the

Placenta towards an accessible and effective pregnancy system.

Farah is a great pleasure to have you here and the stage is yours.

Thank you so much Dr. Mayer.

It's a pleasure for me and good afternoon everybody.

So yeah, I work on placental tissue characterization using multi-modal imaging approach.

In to this talk I will share my research and vision for a placental evaluation based

pregnancy screening system that will be effective and accessible.

And I in childbirth in alarming rates.

Unfortunately, 94% of all maternal deaths occur in low and lower middle income countries,

which are mostly clustered along the sub-Saharan Africa and Southern and Central Asian region.

Only because of women leaves in a low income country makes her around 100 and 3D times

more susceptible to death due to childbirth compared to a women in a high income country.

So these inequities in death which is often cited as the largest discrepancy of all public

health statistics reflects the inequities in access to pregnancy health care.

So this is an excellent example of what the famous economist Amartez Saint-Calls, which

is a remittable injustice, which is a condition that is fundamental unfair but within our capacity

to change.

Now, most maternal deaths can be prevented by ensuring access to high quality care and

regular screening during pregnancy.

Obstetric ultrasound is an essential component of antinatal care that allows identification

and management of complicated pregnancy and therefore it can make the difference between

the life and death for the mother and also for the baby.

Therefore in its 2016 antinatal care recommendation for pregnant women, the World Health Organization

recommended one ultrasound scan before 24 weeks to improve a pregnant woman's experience.

Until recently, the high cost of ultrasound machine has been among the barriers for the

widespread implementation of ultrasound scan.

In the recent years, a number of companies have launched affordable and compact ultrasound

units which are available for less than $5,000.

With the availability of low cost point of care ultrasound units, there are now greater

opportunities for increased ultrasound access in resource pore settings.

However, traditional ultrasound is highly dependent on the user interpretation and it also

depends on the system settings.

Therefore, the benefit of ultrasound in terms of screening for complication and appropriate

referral would be limited by the lack of training and expertise in sonography.

Additionally, the ultrasound image quality the hand health units are not the same as the

high end alternatives that water effects the interpretation of the operator.

But if we have an ultrasound machine that can provide quantitative measures, for example,

a system equipped with quantitative ultrasound, that might present a possible solution.

Unlike traditional one, quantitative ultrasound would provide the same measures irrespective