Multiscan echofetography: application to the study of fetal breathing movements

Abstract

The recording and interpretation of fetal breathing movements is an area of human perinatology which is currently receiving much attention. A multi-element echographic instrument, originally developed for the real-time cross-sectional visualization of moving cardiac structures in the human body (Bom, Lancee, Van Zwieten, Kloster and Roelandt, 1973), was applied to the visualization of fetal breathing movements, and the technique called multiscan echofetography. By utilizing one of the 20 elements of the transducer as a single-element probe, fetal breathing movements, visualized in real-time, were recorded by the conventional M-mode display on a hardcopy recorder. From 17 patients, with 19 fetuses, 27 separate recordings have been obtained. In 22 of these recordings fetal breathing movements were present; in 5, such movements were observed not to occur during the 30-minute monitoring period.