Electrical Activity of Uterus as Reliable Information on Contractions During Pregnancy and Labour

In this paper an evaluation of analysis of uterine electrical signals as an alternative method to tocography for contractile activity monitoring is presented. A set of dedicated indices was defined to estimate the inconsistency of the number, location and other descriptive parameters of the corresponding contractions detected in simultaneously recorded mechanical and electrical activity signals. Research material comprised 57 recordings from three groups of pregnant women being: in the first uncomplicated pregnancy, with symptoms of the threatening preterm labour, and during the first period of the physiological labour. The highest consistency as for the number and location of contractions was noted for recordings acquired during labour. Obtained results show synchronization between the mechanical and electrical activity, which varies in different stages of pregnancy and labour, and which is stronger when the birth term approaches.

[1]  G. Prats-Boluda,et al.  Comparison of non-invasive electrohysterographic recording techniques for monitoring uterine dynamics. , 2013, Medical engineering & physics.

[2]  Janusz Jezewski,et al.  Towards noise immune detection of fetal QRS complexes , 2010, Comput. Methods Programs Biomed..

[3]  Javier Garcia-Casado,et al.  Feasibility and Analysis of Bipolar Concentric Recording of Electrohysterogram with Flexible Active Electrode , 2014, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[4]  Janusz Jezewski,et al.  A novel technique for fetal heart rate estimation from Doppler ultrasound signal , 2011, Biomedical engineering online.

[5]  Janusz Jezewski,et al.  Classification of Uterine Electrical Activity Patterns for Early Detection of Preterm Birth , 2013, CORES.

[6]  Janusz Jezewski,et al.  Improving fetal heart rate signal interpretation by application of myriad filtering , 2013 .

[7]  Robert E. Garfield,et al.  Diagnosis and Effective Management of Preterm Labor , 2014 .

[8]  Jan W. M. Bergmans,et al.  Noninvasive Estimation of the Electrohysterographic Action-Potential Conduction Velocity , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[9]  Massimo Mischi,et al.  Inter-electrode delay estimators for electrohysterographic propagation analysis , 2009, Physiological measurement.

[10]  Drago Rudel,et al.  A uterine electromyographic activity as a measure of labour progression , 2010 .

[11]  J. Jezewski,et al.  Application of spatio-temporal filtering to fetal electrocardiogram enhancement , 2011, Comput. Methods Programs Biomed..

[12]  Michael Johannes Rooijakkers,et al.  Automated Conduction Velocity Analysis in the Electrohysterogram for Prediction of Imminent Delivery: A Preliminary Study , 2013, Comput. Math. Methods Medicine.

[13]  J. Jezewski,et al.  Quantitative analysis of contraction patterns in electrical activity signal of pregnant uterus as an alternative to mechanical approach , 2005, Physiological measurement.

[14]  Dariusz Radomski,et al.  Identification of a Nonlinear Association between Components of the Electrohysterographical Signal , 2010 .

[15]  Chiara Rabotti,et al.  Electrohysterographic detection of uterine contractions in term pregnancy , 2015, 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC).

[16]  Ronald M. Aarts,et al.  Low-complexity intrauterine pressure estimation using the Teager energy operator on electrohysterographic recordings , 2014, Physiological measurement.

[17]  J. Jezewski,et al.  Fetal state assessment using fuzzy analysis of fetal heart rate signals—Agreement with the neonatal outcome , 2013 .

[18]  Catherine Marque,et al.  Comparison of Different EHG Feature Selection Methods for the Detection of Preterm Labor , 2013, Comput. Math. Methods Medicine.

[19]  John G. Harris,et al.  Prediction of Intrauterine Pressure From Electrohysterography Using Optimal Linear Filtering , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[20]  J. Wrobel,et al.  Timing events in Doppler ultrasound signal of fetal heart activity , 2004, The 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[21]  Shalom Darmanjian,et al.  Monitoring uterine activity during labor: a comparison of 3 methods. , 2012, American journal of obstetrics and gynecology.

[22]  Hubert Preissl,et al.  Detection of Uterine MMG Contractions Using a Multiple Change Point Estimator and the K-Means Cluster Algorithm , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[23]  M. Khalil,et al.  Complexity analysis of the uterine electromyography , 2010, 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

[24]  M. Lucovnik,et al.  Noninvasive uterine electromyography for prediction of preterm delivery. , 2011, American journal of obstetrics and gynecology.

[25]  Artur Przelaskowski,et al.  Assessment of Uterine Contractile Activity during a Pregnancy Based on a Nonlinear Analysis of the Uterine Electromyographic Signal , 2008, Information Technologies in Biomedicine.