Passive fetal heart rate monitoring apparatus and method with enhanced fetal heart beat discrimination

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United States of America Patent

PATENT NO 5524631
SERIAL NO

08323943

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ATTORNEY / AGENT: (SPONSORED)

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Abstract

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An apparatus for acquiring signals emitted by a fetus, identifying fetal heart beats and determining a fetal heart rate. Multiple sensor signals are outputted by a passive fetal heart rate monitoring sensor. Multiple parallel nonlinear filters filter these multiple sensor signals to identify fetal heart beats in the signal data. A processor determines a fetal heart rate based on these identified fetal heart beats. The processor includes the use of a figure of merit weighting of heart rate estimates based on the identified heart beats from each filter for each signal. The fetal heart rate thus determined is outputted to a display, storage, or communications channel. A method for enhanced fetal heart beat discrimination includes acquiring signals from a fetus, identifying fetal heart beats from the signals by multiple parallel nonlinear filtering, and determining a fetal heart rate based on the identified fetal heart beats. A figure of merit operation in this method provides for weighting a plurality of fetal heart rate estimates based on the identified fetal heart beats and selecting the highest ranking fetal heart rate estimate.

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Patent Owner(s)

  • THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AS REPRESENTED BY THE ADMINISTRATOR OF THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

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Inventor(s)

Inventor Name Address # of filed Patents Total Citations
Livingston, David L Salem, VA 4 72
Pretlow, III Robert A Redmond, WA 4 297
Zahorian, Stephen A Norfolk, VA 1 39

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