A novel approach to comparison of the fetal heart rate baseline estimation algorithms

A number of algorithms for estimating the so called fetal heart rate baseline was proposed so far. However, there is no reference pattern enabling their objective evaluation, and thus no methodology of comparing the competing algorithms still exists. In this paper we propose a method for evaluation of automatically determined baseline in reference to a group of experts, basing on ten separate groups of signals comprising typical patterns observed in the fetal heart rate. For the purpose of quantitative assessment of the estimated baseline a new synthetic inconsistency coefficient is presented. The proposed methodology was applied to evaluate ten well-known algorithms. We believe that the method will be a valuable tool for assessment of the existing algorithms, as well as for developing new ones.