Spontaneous movements as prognostic tool of neurodevelopmental outcomes in preterm infants: a narrative review

An estimated 15 million infants are born prematurely each year. Although the survival rate of preterm infants has increased with advances in perinatal and neonatal care, many still experience various complications. Since improving the neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm births is a crucial topic, accurate evaluations should be performed to detect infants at high risk of cerebral palsy. General movements are spontaneous movements involving the whole body as the expression of neural activity and can be an excellent biomarker of neural dysfunction caused by brain impairment in preterm infants. The predictive value of general movements with respect to cerebral palsy increases with continuous observation. Automated approaches to examining general movements based on machine learning can help overcome the limited utilization of assessment tools owing to their qualitative or semiquantitative nature and high dependence on assessor skills and experience. This review covers each of these topics by summarizing normal and abnormal general movements as well as recent advances in automatic approaches based on infantile spontaneous movements.