Award honour for pregnancy scan pioneer

A doctor has been given a national award for her work in pioneering a fetal MRI scanning service which detects abnormalities in the placenta and in babies in the womb.

Dr Elspeth Whitby, consultant radiologist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The college said her work had led to long-lasting, significant improvements in women's health.

"It was a great honour to receive this award which marks a career dedicated to developing and improving MRI imaging of the baby and the placenta," Whitby said.

The service was first developed by Whitby in Sheffield and is now available nationally.

It offers additional scans to women when a problem has been detected on a pregnancy ultrasound scan or if there is a family history of complications and more detailed images are needed.

Women referred to the service can either have their scans at Sheffield or more locally and then have them reviewed in the city.

Whitby also supported and trained staff at other centres to be able to perform the scans, teaching fellow radiologists how to interpret the images.

The aim is to create a network of centres of excellence around the UK.

Whitby, who is also an honorary senior lecturer in fetal, placental and postmortem MRI at the University of Sheffield, was put forward for the award by her clinical colleagues.

She said: "I would not have been able to do any of this without the support of both my colleagues in radiology, physics and obstetrics and the women who have kindly allowed me to obtain and use their images, many of whom were going through a very hard time in their lives.

"This award is a thank you and a recognition of all these people too and hopefully will encourage other radiologists to work in this field."

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