Abstract
Fetal electronic monitoring is extensive and important in obstetrics. Although fetal movement is ususally used as an important indicator for quantifying fetal wellbeing, non-invasive and long-term monitoring of fetal movement remains challenging. The object of this study is to develop an algorithm for automatic detection of the fetal movements based on the analysis of Doppler ultrasound signals. In order to detect fetal movements automatically, a two-step process was proposed to track fetal movement. In Step 1, to suppress the problem of error detection, we calculated the baseline of the fetal movement signals from actography to extract new signals. In step2, we recalculated the threshold value of fetal movement detection by utilizing the information of fetal heart rate (FHR) acceleration to produced adaptive threshold values. The results showed that the union of results detected by the proposed method from actography and tocography achieved an encouraging performance with highest sensitivity and acceptable positive predictive value (PPV).
Highlights
Fetal movement has been used as an indicator of fetal health for a long time (Sadovsky & Yaffe, 1973; Sadovsky, Mahler, Polishuk, & Malkin, 1973)
In order to assess the accuracy of the automatic movement detection, the fetal movements detected by algorithms are considered correct when it is in the time range within -3s~3s of the fetal movement detected by the expert
Fetal movements detected by expert are called expert-detected movements and fetal movements detected by algorithms are called automatic movements
Summary
Fetal movement has been used as an indicator of fetal health for a long time (Sadovsky & Yaffe, 1973; Sadovsky, Mahler, Polishuk, & Malkin, 1973). Studying in maternal fetal movement counts as an indicator of fetal health began to flourish in the 1970s and 1980s (Pearson, 1979; Wilailak, Suthutvoravut, Cherng-Sa-Ad, Herabutya, & Chaturachinda, 1992). Even with various fetal assessment methods to determine optimal delivery time, fetal movement is still a component of clinical decision-making (Lai, Nowlan, Vaidyanathan, Shaw, & Lees, 2016). The methods of determining fetal movement generally include maternal involvement, clinical involvement, technical assistance and automation technology (Stanger, Horey, Hooker, & Custovic, 2017). The signal called actogram has become an integral part of the cardiotocography trace providing information on the fetal movement activity (Wróbel et al, 2014)
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