EMS-based Analysis of Electrohysterograms for Patients with Preterm Birth Risk

Monitoring maternal and fetal physiological signals from early stages of the pregnancy has become a more common practice due to the high risk implications of preterm delivery. This has led to the development of different fetal and maternal biosignal analysis methods that provide additional information about their wellbeing. The electrohysterogram (EHG) is a non-invasive monitoring technique used to acquire uterine electrical activity. The paper presents the analysis of EHG parameters traditionally used in electromuscular (EMS) activity analysis. The results are determined by computing the EHG parameters for two groups taken into consideration: the control group which contains recordings obtained from patients that delivered the pregnancy to term and the preterm group which contains recordings acquired from patients that had a preterm delivery. The analysis consists of establishing significant statistical differences between EMS-based parameters obtained for time and frequency domain in order to determine preterm birth risk.