**Biomedical Signals Analysis**

**Chapter 2**

Provisional chapter

**Fuzzy Detection of Fetal Distress for Antenatal**

Fuzzy Detection of Fetal Distress for Antenatal

Monitoring in Pregnancy with Fetal Growth

Igor V. Lakhno, Bertha Patricia Guzmán-Velázquez and

**and Normal**

Igor V. Lakhno,

Abstract

1. Introduction

Bertha Patricia Guzmán-Velázquez and

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

José Alejandro Díaz-Méndez

José Alejandro Díaz-Méndez

Restriction and Normal

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80223

**Monitoring in Pregnancy with Fetal Growth Restriction**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.80223

Monitoring of fetal cardiac activity is a well-known approach to the assessment of fetal health. The fetal heart rate can be measured using conventional cardiotocography (CTG). However, this method does not provide the beat-to-beat variability of the fetal heart rate because of the averaging nature of the autocorrelation function that is used to estimate the heart rate from a set of heart beats enclosed in the autocorrelation function window. Therefore, CTG presents important limitations for fetal arrhythmia diagnosis. CTG has a high rate of false positives and poor inter- and intra-observer reliability, such that fetal status and the perinatal outcome cannot be predicted reliably. Non-invasive fetal electrocardiography (NI-FECG) is a promising low-cost and non-invasive continuous fetal monitoring alternative. However, there is little that has been published to date on the clinical usability of NI-FECG. The chapter will include data on the accurate diagnosing of fetal distress based on heart rate variability (HRV). A fuzzy logic inference system was designed based on a set of fetal descriptors selected from the HRV responses, as evident descriptors of fetal well-being, to increase the sensitivity and specificity of detection. This approach is found to be rather prospective for the subsequent clinical implementation.

Keywords: fetal non-invasive electrocardiography, fetal heart rate variability, fetal distress

Electronic fetal monitoring is an important part of the prenatal surveillance system that contributes to the best perinatal outcome. Its objective is the correct evaluation of fetal well-being.

> © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
