COMPARISON OF INSTANTANEOUS FETAL HEART RATE EXTRACTED FROM ABDOMINAL AND DIRECT FETAL ELECTROCARDIOGRAMS
This work is an attempt to assess the reliability o f indirect abdominal electrocardiography as an alte rnative technique of fetal monitoring. As a reference signa l we used the simultaneously acquired direct fetal electrocardiogram. Each recording consisted of four signals acquired f rom maternal abdomen and the reference signal acquired directly from fetal head. The first stage of our study conce rned the signal loss episodes. In order to reduce t he influence of incorrectly detected R-waves, some certain validati on rules were applied. In the second stage, the cor responding intervals determined on basis of both acquisition m ethods were matched and the accuracy of fetal heart rate measurement was evaluated. Although the accuracy of abdominal electrocardiography turned out to be sli ghtly lower than reported for ultrasound method, it still has s ome unique features deciding of its prevalence in a certain circumstances.