The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $1.36 million, four-year grant to researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to develop a non-invasive means of detecting weaknesses in a pregnant woman’s pelvic floor muscles that could lead to injury while giving birth.
The principal investigators are Hari Eswaran, Ph.D., a professor who is the director of research for the College of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Institute for Digital Health & Innovation, and Dr. Sallie Oliphant, an assistant professor in the department who is board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery.
The researchers will use magnetomyography, a technique for mapping muscle activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in the muscles.
They will also use a device called SARA (SQUID-Array for Reproductive Assessment) and was developed at UAMS in 2000 by a team that included Eswaran. SQUID stands for Superconducting Quantitative Interference Device.
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