ATLANTA, Ga. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Every year, 36,000 U.S. children are born with heart defects, or abnormalities that keep their hearts from functioning properly, putting their lives at risk. Fixing these problems can mean complex, repeated surgeries and every case is unique. Now, a virtual tool is giving surgeons a new way to predict and improve the outcome for these tiny patients, before they ever get to the Operating Room.

Georgia Chapman is only two, yet she's already had two major operations to repair congenital defects in her heart.

"Didn't know nothing was really wrong with her until I took her in for a diaper rash," Ashley Chapman, Georgia's mother, told Ivanhoe. "They thought they heard a heart murmur and they sent me to a specialist."

A successful surgery gave Georgia a second chance at life.

In complex pediatric heart surgeries, precision is key. That's where Georgia Tech biomedical engineers come in.

With an MRI image of the patient's heart, researchers apply the science of fluid dynamics, or how things flow, to first identify the patent's specific problem. The system shows how different surgical approaches change the patient's blood flow so the surgeon can see which approach would work best.

Click to View Video and Full Article