A state-based model for fetal distress estimation during labor through a progressive analysis of the cardiotocographic recording

During laboratory, the fetal welfare assessment (CTG), which provides continuous information on fetal heart rate (FHR) in relation to uterine contractions (UC) signals. This information helps clinicians to observe how the fetus reacts to stress and thus indicate timely intervention. CTG patterns, whose properties are defined in guidelines for CTG fetal monitoring. However, CTG interpretation is difficult since it involves the human visualization of highly complex signals. In consequence, the interpretation of CTG has been shown to suffer from widespread intra- and inter-observer disagreement, leading to a poor interpretation of reproducibility.
Nowadays, in order to reduce the intra -and inter-observer disagreements and improve the CTG interpretation, much effort has been made on improving the clinical guidelines for CTG interpretation and on providing support to clinicians using expert systems and advanced signal processing algorithms. However, these efforts do not show clear evidence on improving the estimation of fetal acidemia.
In this context, we propose to develop a welfare state model for fetal condition estimation during labor and delivery based on the observations of FHR and UC signals. The main idea is to design a state model of clinical guidelines. This model will allow to connect proposed CTG guidelines with FHR signal features by using standard and advanced signal processing and classification techniques.