Design Methodology and Implementation of an Antenatal Care System Using Abdominal Acoustic Signals

Abstract

This research develops an antenatal care system using abdominal acoustic signals. newlineAntenatal care is an integral part of management of high risk as well as low risk newlinepregnancies. The primary goal of antenatal care is to ensure normal delivery of a healthy newlinebaby. This can be achieved through long-term and continuous surveillance of pregnant newlinewomen. Monitoring of fetal heart rate (FHR) patterns is an established way of antenatal newlinecare and offers important information about health of the unborn. Doppler ultrasound newlinebased fetal cardiotocograph is traditionally used for monitoring the variations in FHR for newlineevaluation of fetal distress. However, the existing system is not suitable for long-term and newlinecontinuous monitoring as frequent and long time exposure to ultrasound radiations is newlineharmful for both the mother and the fetus. In addition, this system cannot be used for newlinehome monitoring because the equipments required are costly and complex thus needing newlineexperts to operate and interpret the results. newlineThe proposed system overcomes the disadvantages using fetal phonocardiography in newlinewhich natural fetal heart sound signals are processed and analyzed for assessment of fetal newlinewellbeing. Innovative signal processing and analysis techniques have been developed and newlineapplied to these signals. Diagnostic information in the form of FHR parameters are newlinederived from fetal heart sound signal. A model, based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference newlinesystem is developed for classification of fetal health status. newlineTo study the performance of the developed system, experiments were carried out with newlinereal and simulated fPCG signals under the supervision of medical experts. Its newlineperformance is found to be close to the widely accepted Doppler ultrasound based fetal newlinemonitor. The overall performance shows that the developed system has long-term newlinemonitoring capability with very high performance to cost ratio. newlineThe presented system has the capability to provide regular information about the fetal newlinecondition, as and when needed by mother or the medical