Cardiac vectors in the healthy human fetus: developmental changes assessed by magnetocardiography and realistic approximations of the volume conductor

Abstract

This study sought to characterize the developmental changes of three measures used to describe the morphology of the fetal cardiac vector: QRS peak-amplitude, QRS duration and QRS time-amplitude integral. To achieve this objective, we rely on a recently developed methodology for fetal cardiac vector estimation, using multichannel fetal magnetocardiographic (fMCG) recordings and realistic approximations of the volume conductors obtained from free-hand ultrasound imaging. fMCG recordings and 3D ultrasound images were obtained from 23 healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies for a total of 77 recordings performed at gestational ages between 22 and 37 weeks. We report the developmental changes of the cardiac vector parameters with respect to gestational age and estimated fetal weight, as well as their dependence on the estimated ventricular mass derived from cardiac dimensions measured with M-mode ultrasound. The normative values can be used along with the cardiac time intervals reported by previous fMCG studies to assist future clinical studies investigating conditions that affect fetal cardiac function.