An advanced software tool for analyzing and interpeting Gardiotocograms

A post for a paper in 4th International Conference Neural Networks and Expert Systems in Medicine & Healthcare, Milos, Island, Greece, 20-22 June 2001....

ABSTRACT: Labour is a stressed procedure for both the fetus and the mother and a key issue for fetus surveillance is the detection of fetal distress. This paper describes a software tool that has been developed in order to monitoring fetus status by acquiring and processing the Cardiotocogram (CTG). This software tool establishes a communication between PC and the cardiotocograph, the medical device that records and prints out the Fetal Heard Rate and the Uterine Activity. Then, the software tool pre-processes the signal from the cardiotocographic device, artifacts are removed and non-signal parts (gaps) are filled utilizing an interpolation method. The more advanced part of the software tool includes the processing of CTG signal, extracting the characteristics of the signal such as baseline, variability, accelerations and decelerations. According to these characteristics, CTG can be evaluated and comments on the physiological or not status of the fetus can be done and giving an objective estimation on the health of fetus to the doctor.

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