Assessment of uterine contractile activity during a pregnancy based on a nonlinear analysis of the uterine electromyographic signal

Abstract

Monitoring of a pregnancy course is one of socially important application of biomedical engineering in clinical medicine. In this paper we evaluated a possibility of a nonlinear analysis of an electrohystegraphical signal for assessment of an uterine contractile activity during a pregnancy. This analysis was performed based on a sample entropy statistic. The obtained initial results confirmed that this method could provide clinical useful information for an obstetrical care. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.