Wearable fetal monitoring system having textile electrodes

摘要

A seamless, smart fetal monitoring garment and methods of using thereof. The system includes a knitted or interwoven garment having a multiplicity of conductive textile electrodes for sensing maternal and fetal electrical vital signals. The maternal and fetal electrical vital signals are selected from a group including maternal heart rate, fetal heart rate and electromyogram (EMG) activities including uterine activities. The method includes wearing the garment, acquiring electrical mixed common, maternal and fetal vital signals from surface region of a pregnant woman, using the plurality of textile electrodes, optimally weighted summing-up the acquired signals, analyzing the summed-up signals to thereby extract the maternal signal and the fetal signal, including determining their heart rates, and including detecting health hazards and in some embodiments, including detecting a uterine contraction sequence suggesting the need to be hospitalized for birth giving.

主权项

1. A method for maternal and fetal monitoring comprising the steps of:
a) wearing a knitted or interwoven smart maternal garment having a plurality of textile electrodes integrally knitted or interwoven therein, said textile electrodes being in communication flow with a processor; b) acquiring electrical mixed common, maternal and fetal electrical vital signals from a predetermined external surface region of a pregnant woman, using a plurality of textile electrodes integrally knitted or interwoven into a maternal garment; c) optimally weighted summing-up said acquired mixed maternal and fetal electrical vital signals to thereby form a summed-up maternal signal, having a substantially higher SNR than either of the acquired maternal and fetal electrical vital signals; d) analyzing the summed-up maternal signal to thereby extract the maternal signal from said summed-up maternal signal; and e) healing the acquired mixed maternal and fetal electrical vital signals, including deleting the extracted maternal signal from the respective acquired mixed maternal and fetal electrical vital signal, to thereby form a plurality of healed-maternal ECG signals; f) optimally weighted summing-up said healed-maternal ECG signals to thereby form a summed-up coherent fetal signal, having a substantially higher SNR than either of the healed-maternal ECG signals; g) analyzing said summed-up coherent fetal signal to thereby extract a fetal signal from said summed-up coherent fetal signal.