Novel non-invasive in-house fabricated wearable system with a hybrid algorithm for fetal movement recognition

Fetal movement count monitoring is one of the most commonly used methods of assessing fetal well-being. While few methods are available to monitor fetal movements, they consist of several adverse qualities such as unreliability as well as the inability to be conducted in a non-clinical setting. Therefore, this research was conducted to design a complete system that will enable pregnant mothers to monitor fetal movement at home. This system consists of a non-invasive, non-transmitting sensor unit that can be fabricated at a low cost. An accelerometer was utilized as the primary sensor and a micro-controller based circuit was implemented. Clinical testing was conducted utilizing this sensor unit. Two phases of clinical testing procedures were done and during the first phase readings from 120 mothers were taken while during the second phase readings from 15 mothers were taken. Validation was done by conducting an abdominal ultrasound scan which was utilized as the ground truth during the second phase of the clinical testing procedure. A clinical survey was also conducted in parallel with clinical testings in order to improve the sensor unit as well as to improve the final system. Four different signal processing algorithms were implemented on the data set and the performance of each was compared with each other. Out of the four algorithms three algorithms were able to obtain a true positive rate around 85%. However, the best algorithm was selected on the basis of minimizing the false positive rate. Consequently, the most feasible as well as the best performing algorithm was determined and it was utilized in the final system. This algorithm have a true positive rate of 86% and a false positive rate of 7% Furthermore, a mobile application was also developed to be used with the sensor unit by pregnant mothers. Finally, a complete end to end method to monitor fetal movement in a non-clinical setting was presented by the proposed system.

Automated summary

Fetal movement count monitoring is essential for assessing fetal well-being, and this research developed a complete system allowing pregnant mothers to monitor fetal movement at home. Through clinical testing, the most suitable signal processing algorithm was determined for the final system implementation.