Transcript

A Perth hospital has become the first in the world to trial new technology to better prevent infection in premature babies. The potentially life saving device works like a microscope at the bedside, targeting the body's largest organ, the skin. Skin that's not quite ready for this world. Born at just 24 weeks, this little girl's skin is paper thin. Every procedure comes with risk. Babies are born early, are very, very vulnerable to skin damage. In the state specialist neonatal units, about half of the tiniest babies develop skin injuries in their first two weeks of life. It leaves them at a higher risk of infection. What we want to look at is learning more about the skin, that we can help prevent some of these injuries from occurring. We're gonna do scans of several. Areas of the body that's where cutting edge technology comes in a biopsy like test without the scalpel. The machine provides such detailed imaging that we hope that in the future we'll be able to tell that injuries to the skin are occurring before our eyes can pick it up. The day Blive optical coherence tomography scanner creates a 3D image detecting skin cancer at a cellular level. But this is the first time it's been used on babies 60 of them were take part. In a trial, a King Edward Memorial Hospital helping to answer key anatomy questions that could save lives. We are really asking how does the skin mixture, what injuries the skin and how can we prevent it. There are only four of these machines in Australia and this is the only one deployed to a maternity hospital. The other three are in Melanoma clinics. The machine cost almost $400,000, a purchase made possible by Telethon and Mineral Resources donations. Lucy Murray. 7 News.