In the early 1970s intracranial haemorrhage in prematurely born babies was thought to be predominantly fatal, with the few survivors developing post haemorrhagic hydrocephalus. With the introduction of computed tomography brain scanning of surviving premature infants, it was found that far from being fatal, most infants who had intraventricular haemorrhage survived—and often with few or no abnormal neurological signs. In the late 1970s real-time ultrasonography was shown to be a convenient, safe, and reproducible technique …