PRENATAL DIAGNOSIS · indices of fetal developmental disturbances enabled by advanced signal identification techniques
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2009-05-15 → 2011-05-14
- EU contribution
- €161,564
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IEF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Prenatal diagnosis - indices of fetal developmental disturbances enabled by advanced signal identification techniques
In the present project we applied innovative developments of advanced signal separation and identification methods in order to improve the identification of fetal heart beats and fetal auditory evoked cortical responses from biomagnetic recordings. Additionally, we explored simultaneously behavioural state dependent heart rate patterns, fetal heart rate variability indices and reliable fetal auditory evoked response indices. The developed methods were evaluated using different clinical biomagnetic measurements from a comprehensive clinical database. The novel signal processing framework developed in the present project enables the detection of the fetal auditory evoked responses in low signal-to-noise ratio conditions. To achieve this, we combined different approaches that address data cleaning, response determination and statistical validation. Our novel processing framework provides an objective way to identify and eliminate non-physiological variation in the data induced by artifacts. We observed a consistent decrease in the latencies of the auditory evoked potentials with the increase of gestational age. Part of the algorithms used for extracting the fetal auditory evoked responses was used also for an accurate fetal heart beat detection. This enabled the extraction of linear and nonlinear parameters of fetal heart rate variability. Fetal programming of mental and cardiovascular diseases by adverse prenatal environmental influences is a main issue of developmental medicine. The assessment of key parameters with respect to the underlying processes of fetal brain maturation or autonomic nervous system disturbances could foster the early detection of developmental problems and hence the design of therapeutic strategies and save immense cost for public health. However, due to the technical limitations in fetal monitoring, this aspect was not sufficiently addressed in the literature. This project addressed unsolved problems in the field bringing an important contribution in filling this gap in the prenatal diagnostic.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Fetal programming of mental and cardiovascular diseases by adverse prenatal environmental influences is a main issue of developmental medicine. However, the number of measurable functional parameters in the human fetus is limited. The assessment of key parameters of the underlying processes of fetal brain maturation could foster the early detection of developmental problems, the design of therapeutic strategies and save immense cost for public health. Biomagnetic measurements of fetal heart rate patterns (HRP) and fetal auditory evoked responses (fAER) may open a new non-invasive diagnostic window. Up to now the signal to noise ratio of these recordings is non-sufficient and they are too short for an appropriate consideration of fetal state behaviour. Consequently reliable clinical studies reflecting developmental disturbances could not be performed. The goal of the project is two-fold: (1) to improve the identification of fetal heart beats and fAER in longer and non-stationary recordings, (2) to explore for the first time simultaneously behavioural state dependent HRP, indices of fetal heart rate variability and reliable fAER indices; both appropriate to data of a longitudinal study involving intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and antenatal steroid (glucocorticoid GC) administration. This will be achieved by innovative developments of advanced signal separation and identification methods to improve the signal to noise ratio in the biomagnetic recordings and novel signal analysis approaches best suited for nonlinear and nonstationary signals. The host group provides a unique data bank of functional, clinical and biomagnetic measurements from normal fetuses and those with possibly developmental disturbances by IUGR or GC. The developed methods will be evaluated on the study data set mentioned above and will be prerequisite for a significant improvement of the signal quality, reduction of dropouts and the design of advanced indices of fetal brain development.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITATSKLINIKUM JENA · JenaCoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union