"Patients can be appropriately triaged for surgery, treatment, medical treatment or expectant management with a high degree of accuracy," study author Dr. Sherelle Laifer-Narin said.

The following paper covered obstetric hemorrhage, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality.

"Ultrasound is the mainstay of fetal and placental imaging, and despite improvements in technology, the diagnostic sensitivity for revealing bleeding is low," said study author Dr. Gabriele Masselli.

The study revealed that MR detects the source of hemorrhage more accurately than a sonogram can, making it a useful second modality when an ultrasound comes up negative.

Imaging can't solve it all — yet

The fifth paper tackled respiratory distress syndrome, a complication that impacts 80,000 pregnancies in the U.S. each year. Amniocentesis has traditionally been used to detect lung immaturity, associated with the syndrome, but the procedure is invasive and can lead to infection, the study author noted.

"As far-reaching as technological advances have been, there are many diseases that remain untouched by technology," said study author Dr. Megan Mills, of the fourth paper. "Respiratory distress syndrome is one of them."

Her team set out to determine the value of MR as a replacement screening for lung immaturity. The hypothesis was that a correlation exists between MR lung signal intensity and gestational age, but unfortunately, while numbers were promising, the team did not feel a conclusion could be drawn from them.

Quoting Mark Twain, Mills noted, "Facts are stubborn but statistics are more pliable."

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