A mobile wearable wireless fetal heart monitoring system

Abstract

A wireless and mobile system for concurrent non-invasive monitoring of fetal heart rate and uterine contractions is described. The end-to-end system consists of a wearable Doppler ultrasound and pressure sensing front-end equipped with short range radio, mobile cellular gateway for wide area communication, web server, and browser based user interface for remote monitoring and diagnostics. The system has been fully implemented, tested and characterized in benchtop tests. It has also been used to monitor pregnant women during feasibility trials in a clinical setup. In vivo experiments measuring heart rate and contraction using the system in parallel with a standard fetal monitoring device yielded concordance correlation coefficients of 88% and 94%, respectively.