Performance of source imaging techniques of spatially extended generators of uterine activity

Abstract Preterm birth (PTB) is one of the most important complications in pregnancy. Reliable diagnosis means are lacking and the underlying physiological mechanisms are unclear. Determining the location of various correlated and simultaneously active uterus sources from abdominal ElectroHysterogram (EHG) recordings and extracting the corresponding uterus signals is a challenging problem. The use of the EHG for imaging the sources of the uterine electrical activity could be a new and powerful diagnosis technique. In this paper we compare the ability of six distributed source localization methods to recover extended sources of uterus activity from abdominal EHG. As no gold standard to evaluate source localization methods, exists, we perform our evaluation by using a well-controlled realistic simulations of EHG signals, involving several locations. Simulated data were corrupted by physiological EHG noise. The performance of several state-of-the-art techniques for extended source localization is evaluated using a detection accuracy index using the Dipole Localization Error, the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve AUC, and the Correlation Coefficient.