A novel approach for phonocardiographic signals processing to make possible fetal heart rate evaluations

In this paper, a non-invasive, portable and inexpensive antenatal care system is developed using fetal phonocardiography. The fPCG technique has the potential to provide low-cost and long-term diagnostics to the under-served population. The fPCG signal contains valuable diagnostic information regarding fetal health during antenatal period. The fPCG signals are acquired from the maternal abdominal surface using a wireless data acquisition and recording system. The diagnostic parameters e.g., baseline, variability, acceleration and deceleration of the fetal heart rate are derived from the fPCG signal. A model based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system is developed for the evaluation of fetal health status. To study the performance of the developed system, experiments were carried out with real fPCG signals under the supervision of medical experts. Its performance is found to be in close proximity with the widely accepted Doppler ultrasound based fetal monitor results. The overall performance shows that the developed system has a long-term monitoring capability with very high performance to cost ratio. The system can be used as first screening tool by the medical practitioners.