At least a dozen pregnant moms have complained, some to the police, that a Pickering prenatal imaging centre is handing out the same stock picture to women who go there for an ultrasound.
Jennifer Cusimano said she went to BabyView in Ajax for a 3D ultrasound on May 3. She said she paid $160 for two images, gender determination and a recording of her unborn child’s heartbeat.
While reading posts on a Facebook group she is part of, one woman asked other members of the group to share photos of their ultrasounds.
“Another girl posted a picture of her 3D scan and just said ‘everyone share your pictures to compare the images’,” Cusimano said.
Cusimano posted her image, and then puzzlingly saw another woman post an image that looked exactly like hers.
“Wait a minute, wasn’t this picture just posted by someone else,” she recalled saying at the time.
The two scans looked virtually identical to her.
“Every nook, cranny, everything, there was just no way there was a mistake.”
By Thursday morning, at least 13 women had contacted Cusimano, all saying they had received what appeared to be the same image over the past few months.
BabyView says technical glitch is to blame
Another parent, Ron James from Ajax, said he and his wife will file a police report, in order to get a refund through their credit card company.
“What we want out of this is nothing, a refund for what we got done, that’s the only thing that I want,” James said.
He claims the baby image he has matches an image provided to a friend who had an appointment just before them on the same day.
“For us, it’s our second child,” James said. “For our friend, it was the first child. She’s really torn up about it.”
But Adeel Mir from BabyView called the Sun and stressed they have issued an apology and are investigating.
Mir said his wife Mohsina Adeel Mir is the licensed sonographer and owner of the clinic, and that they’ve been operating for almost six months.
It’s “too early” to know what happened, he explained.
However, Mir believes it could be “some technical glitch” that possibly could have caused the same image to be printed out for different clients.
“Another reason which is another technical issue that, you know, the babies at that age, before 22 weeks, all babies will look similar. So it’s very hard to make a difference,” Mir added.
The clinic is offering refunds for the imaging service, he said.
“We do apologize for that, whatever happened — this should never have happened in the first place,” he said.
Durham Regional Police said they are aware of the situation.
“We are aware of these reports and are looking into them,” police said in an email.
Agencies/Canadajournal