Computer-assisted Fetal Monitoring - Obstetrics

In the context of fetal heart monitoring, the SurFAO project offers an alternative to current clinical routines. The challenge is to extract, from few non-invasive sensors on the maternal abdomen, a fetal electrocardiogram (ECGf) of great quality allowing a clinical diagnosis (follow-up of the FHR (fetal heart rate)) and extraction of ECG waveforms). The proposed approach proposes a technological breakthrough shared by a consortium of researchers and clinicians. The originality is driven by innovative methodological choices: the use of a multimodal system (ECG coupling with PCG (phonocardiographic)) for the signal acquisition in order to increase the robustness of information extraction, by taking into account clinical uses and the need for the monitoring process support, and by setting up a reference for this multimodal database. The objective is to feed a database that will be used in the future to develop ECGf extraction methods estimating the FHR.