System for Computing Montevideo Units for Monitoring Progress of Labor

Computation of uterine activity during labor from analog data is described. Uterine activity is measured in Montevideo units which are computed from the time record of intrauterine pressure. The objective of this paper is to describe the computation algorithms necessary to process an analog data record of intrauterine pressure to obtain Montevideo units. The analog data record contains unavoidable artifacts from patient motion, uterine elevation changes, plugged pressure tubes, and other extraneous sources. Algorithms are described that correct for artifacts, provide statistical smoothing, compute the first derivative, locate the maximum pressure of each contraction, and compute the intercontraction time interval.