Fetal Heart Signal Monitoring with Confidence Factor

—In this paper we present a PDA-based fetal heart monitor that is able to provide instantaneous fetal heart rate (FHR) for the pregnant women. A modified spectral subtraction algorithm is first used to remove the unwanted stationary background noise from the noisy fetal heart sound. The AM/FM modulation technique is then employed to make the fetal heart sound more audible so that both pregnant women and gynaecologists can identify the rhythmic fetal heart beat sounds easily. A real-time algorithm is proposed to extract the fetal heart rate information from the weak and noisy signals. Furthermore, based on the signal spectrum distribution, a confidence factor (CF) is designed to indicate the reliability of the estimated fetal heart rate in real time. The device has been tested in a local hospital on a sample group of 41 pregnant women. Our finding shows that an approximate 75% of the pregnant mothers are able to hear their baby’s heart sound clearly using our device. Tests are also ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ICMCS
• Authors: Jianfeng Chen, Koksoon Phua, Ying Song, Louis Shue
• Keywords: Fetal Heart, Fetal Heart Rate, Fetal Heart Sound, ICMCS 2006