Until we figure out how to strap a helmet cam on a fetus, this will be the best view any of us will ever have of what it's like inside a mom-to-be's body during child birth.
Aside, clearly, from our own paddle down the ol' birth canal.
The so-called "cinematic" MRI video (below) provides a side view of a 24-year-old woman's womb during the last 25 seconds of her contractions. She was positioned on the open MRI during the final stages of her labor to record the wild, X-ray view of her baby being born. You can clearly make out its head, brain and body as well as the mother/very good sport's spine.
Doctors shut off the machine (and camera) right as the baby begins to emerge so that the loud noise of the MRI didn't damage its fragile ears.
The birth happened in 2010 at Berlin's Charité University Hospital, but researchers only released it this month in conjunction with their work's publication in a medical journal.
Which means somewhere out there, a 2-year-old now gets to see him/herself star in the coolest birth video ever recorded by man, machine or giddy dad. That, or the child is just horrified.
Groundbreaking as this video is, cinematic MRI was also once used to capture the, uh,... very beginning of the baby-making process. So the technology has now completed a sort-of 'Circle of Life' of its own.
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