Human fetal heart rate analysis during labour
Cazares S., Moulden M., Redman CWG., Tarassenko L.
Analysis of the fetal heart rate (EHR) during labour is difficult due to the presence of decelerations in the FHR caused by uterine contractions. Distressed fetuses can often exhibit delays between uterine contractions and FHR decelerations. In this paper, we investigate whether there is any discriminating information in parameters which are related to this delay. In particular, we calculate the peak-to-trough interval (PTI) as the time interval between the peak of a contraction and the trough of a deceleration for 36 healthy and 36 distressed fetuses. More distressed than healthy fetuses in our study exhibited PTIs ranging from 40 - 80 seconds. We have also proposed a new method for calculating the FHR baseline as the mean FHR excluding decelerations.