Advances in the study of fetal development: From descriptive to dynamic embryology

Abstract

Remarkable advances in medical imaging are facilitating the morphological study of early human prenatal development as well as the clinical assessment of normal and abnormal development during gestation. Classical descriptive embryology has been transformed into dynamic embryology and the interaction between basic embryology and clinical medicine is becoming more and more intimate. This paper describes an overview of the advances in the study of human embryonic and fetal development with special emphasis on the recent progress in embryo imaging. © Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers (P) Ltd.