Development of a low cost fetal heart sound monitoring system for home care application

Abstract

Variations in fetal heart rate (FHR) is a potential indicator of stress on unborn in the womb of mother. In hospitals, FHR surveillance is performed by ultrasound based Doppler equip-ments. However, recent studies show that frequent exposure to ultrasound radiations is not recommended for the fetal well-being. Because of this and many other reasons, these instruments are not recommended for prolonged home monitoring applications. This work is focused around development of a prototype system for fetal home monitoring application. Presented system can record the abnormal FHR and alert the pregnant women to report to a physician. Recorded data is then processed by a novel methodology for deriving results of diagnostic importance. The instrument has been tested on pregnant women in the clinical environment and has gone through an extensive clinical trial at local hospitals. The results show that the technique is suitable and effective for long-term FHR home monitoring application.