Abstract
Monitoring fetal heart rate (FHR) variability plays a fundamental role in fetal state assessment. Reliable FHR signal can be obtained from an invasive direct fetal electrocardiogram (FECG), but this is limited to labour. Alternative abdominal (indirect) FECG signals can be recorded during pregnancy and labour. Quality, however, is much lower and the maternal heart and uterine contractions provide sources of interference. Here, we present ten twenty-minute pregnancy signals and 12 five-minute labour signals. Abdominal FECG and reference direct FECG were recorded simultaneously during labour. Reference pregnancy signal data came from an automated detector and were corrected by clinical experts. The resulting dataset exhibits a large variety of interferences and clinically significant FHR patterns. We thus provide the scientific community with access to bioelectrical fetal heart activity signals that may enable the development of new methods for FECG signals analysis, and may ultimately advance the use and accuracy of abdominal electrocardiography methods.
Highlights
Background & SummaryCardiotocographic monitoring plays an essential role in the assessment of the fetus as it analyses fetal heart rate (FHR) changes against the background of uterine activity and fetal movements[1,2,3]
The content of the B1 pregnancy signal dataset was analyzed in terms of the diversity of maternal electrocardiogram (MECG) and fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) amplitude relationships, as well as their relation to other interferences; mainly muscular as the analysis was performed on abdominal signals after suppression of low-frequency and power line interferences
The evaluation of its usefulness requires, above all, the effectiveness of the fetal QRS complex (FQRS) detection to be measured, which directly affects the continuity of FHR signal determination[18,26]. It depends on the entire abdominal signal processing channel: interference filtering, maternal electrocardiogram suppression and FQRS complexes detection[17,39,56]
Summary
Background & SummaryCardiotocographic monitoring plays an essential role in the assessment of the fetus as it analyses fetal heart rate (FHR) changes against the background of uterine activity and fetal movements[1,2,3]. In the case of a direct FECG signal, the initial noise suppression was carried out in a similar way, with the filter parameters adjusted to the sampling frequency of 1 kHz. The results of preliminary automated detection of fetal QRS complexes were verified by clinical experts, who corrected manually individual fetal heartbeat locations.
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