Who We Are
Nearborn.ai is a Perth-based family-owned business dedicated to enhancing 3D facial ultrasound images, helping parents get a sneak preview of their precious little ones before they are born.
Our Family
Our family consists of Andrew Toomey (Dad), Amanda Toomey (Mum), William Toomey (big brother), and Amelia Toomey (baby sister).
William, our big brother, was excited to meet his little sister and curious to know what she might look like. By the time Mum was 36 weeks pregnant, it was all he could talk about. We booked a 3D facial scan to get a sneak peek of baby Amelia, and we were all amazed to see her. But Dad wanted to remove some of the ultrasound artifacts and got straight to work. Many people were impressed with our early results and wanted the same for their baby photos. So Dad continued to improve the process which lead to the creation of Nearborn.ai.
FAQs
What is the ideal gestational age?
Generally, the best quality images are from about 32 weeks onwards. However, we have had good results with ideal scans from the 28 week gestational milestone. We do not recommend submitting an image taken any earlier in the pregnancy as we may not be able to effectively enhance the image quality.
Do I need to preprocess my image?
Many 3D ultrasound services provide images that may contain personal information around the borders. We only require the part showing your baby's face. You are welcome to remove personal information by painting over or cropping it. If you crop, ensure there's at least 10-15% padding around your baby's face for best results. Our workflow begins by automatically identifying and cropping your baby's face from your image.
Do you offer a premium service?
Yes, we do. For those who want the utmost quality, we provide a premium enhancement service that adds significant detail and quality.
- Your image will be manually processed using our custom in-house tools to ensure that your final result is of the highest quality.
- We are able to process the image further through human-in-the-loop guidance than when using an automated workflow. We can offer further image qualities such as colour matching, relighting, and are able to process noiser and more ambiguous images (within reason).
- Click the "Premium Service" option when making your order.
- If you have any requests or specific requirements, please contact us to discuss them with us.
What will I receive in my order?
Upon successful completion of your order, you will receive:
- Enhanced 3D ultrasound images in original and high resolution via email.
- A copy of the base and enhanced image comparison for your records.
How long is your turnaround time
We endeavour to return your images in the shortest time possible without compromising on quality. Under ideal conditions, the turnaround time for a Standard Service order is between 20 minutes and 2 hours. However, as we personally check results for quality your order may take longer.
You should expect your Premium service order to be completed and returned to you within 7 business days.
Please contact us if you have been waiting longer than 1 business day for a Standard order or 7 business days for a Premium order
How can I ensure the best possible results?
If your image contains excessive noise (lumpiness), contains ambiguous structures, or is not a clear image of your baby's face, our model will have difficulty interpreting and enhancing the image quality.
To ensure the best possible results:
- Have a look at our gallery for examples of images that our service is intended to enhance.
- Submit an ultrasound image that contains a clear view of your baby's face. Images without a clearly visible face may not be processed at all.
- Best results are typically achieved from images captured from 32 weeks gestation onwards so long as the sonographer was able to capture a good image.
- Select an image that does not contain excessive noise, ambiguous structures, or significant occlusions (such as the placenta covering the baby's face).
- Our workflow is designed to enhance images from 3D facial ultrasounds only. Our workflow is unsuitable for 2D ultrasounds, or newborn photographs.
- Diagnostic or obstetric ultrasounds taken for medical purposes might not be intended to capture a clear image of your baby's face. In these cases, ensure that you consider the purpose and content of the image.
- Consider using our Premium Service. We are able to manually guide the workflow towards an ideal result even with images that the Standard Service struggles with.
Can I submit a 2D ultrasound?
We are unable to process 2D ultrasounds into a realistic 3D likeness of your baby.
How Do We Do It?
We have developed a unique iterative workflow using several innovative technologies to achieve our impressive results:
Note:
All AI model training, programming, and web-code was painstakingly developed from the ground up by Andrew (Dad) over a period of 18 months.
Andrew holds a Bachelor of Psychology (with First Class Honours) from Curtin University. He has a very technical mindset and has spent many years studying his broad range of interests. His experience and education in neuroscience, psychology, astrophotography, microscopy, computer science, artificial intelligence development, and statistical analysis (amongst many other things) were advantageous during the development of this service.
We Value Your Privacy
We are committed to your privacy. We securely store all client data in an encrypted format compliant with the Australian Privacy Act 1988. We will never share the information you provide us with any external companies. We have selected Stripe as our payment system as a part of our commitment to your privacy. We do not have access to nor do we store your financial details.
We store your image only until your order is complete. After that, it is securely deleted, leaving only a digital fingerprint as a record in our system. Encrypted data is associated with an order ID, the only link between you and your order details once complete. We retain encrypted data for 4 weeks in case reprocessing is needed, but you may contact us at any time with your name and order ID to request its deletion.
Processing logs regarding our system performance metrics (time taken to process an image, computational resource loadings) are encrypted and stored in an aggregate format for debugging and optimising purposes and cannot be connected to any individual order.
Disclaimer
No part of this service constitutes medical advice. Our service enhances the images based on what our workflow identifies in the image that you supply. By its nature, all image transformation and editing loses information contained in the original image and may introduce new artifacts in the image (particularly in the case of generative image enhancement). We provide an artistic enhancement service of 3D facial ultrasounds of near-term fetuses. Medical advice about your pregnancy should only be given to you by licenced health professionals.
Although we take great care to ensure the final image quality represents a life-like estimation of your baby based on the image provided, this remains an estimation. Factors like image quality and occlusions may impact our ability to achieve a satisfactory result. Best results come from high-quality 3D ultrasounds.
