New noninvasive tool may allow early detection of dangerous intestinal disease in preemies

by Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago

edited by Andrew Zinin

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A new noninvasive technology, called broadband optical spectroscopy (BOS), has promise for reliably detecting necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants at earlier stages, before this devastating intestinal disease progresses enough to be visible on X-rays, according to a first-in-human study from Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery.

NEC strikes suddenly and progresses quickly. At early stages, it can be treated with antibiotics, while more advanced disease often requires surgery and carries a high risk of complications and death. So far, there has been no reliable way to detect it early.

"NEC is one of the most feared diagnoses in any neonatal intensive care unit, and the field has been searching for an early detection tool for decades," said senior author Seth Goldstein, MD, MPhil, a pediatric general and thoracic surgeon at Lurie Children's and an associate professor of surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

"We are excited that our new handheld device reliably distinguishes NEC from healthy tissue within two minutes, and that it can be used at the bedside without subjecting these fragile babies to any pain or radiation. We hope that additional studies confirm our findings that this tool can screen for early stages of NEC."

The noninvasive BOS device, placed gently on the infant's abdomen, measures infrared light reflecting off the intestines and is able to detect color changes that surgeons recognize as indicative of threatened tissue in NEC.

Goldstein, working with lead author and research fellow Ashley Dodd, MD, and colleagues, partnered with Vadim Backman's biomedical engineering lab at Northwestern University to develop BOS.

After achieving prior success using BOS for NEC detection in a mouse model, researchers tested the device in 96 premature infants who were younger than 36 weeks' gestation and did not have congenital cardiac conditions or abdominal wall defects.

"Our results show that BOS is a safe and feasible technology that produced detectable signal changes in premature infants with NEC," Goldstein said.

"These findings suggest that BOS is a promising and potentially groundbreaking modality for screening and early detection of NEC."

Publication details

Ashley C. Dodd et al, First-in-human pilot study of broadband optical spectroscopy (BOS) as noninvasive surveillance for necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), Journal of Pediatric Surgery (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2026.162978

Journal information: Journal of Pediatric Surgery

Key medical concepts

Necrotizing EnterocolitisIntestinesAnti-Bacterial AgentsSurgical Procedures, Operative

Clinical categories

PediatricsChildren's healthGastroenterology Provided by Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago Who's behind this story?

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