Fetal heart rate and its beat-to-beat variability are two important indications about the health and condition of the fetus. The observed maternal electrocardiogram (ECG) signal consists of mother heart signal and fetal heart signal and is often very noisy. In this paper, we propose a multivariate singular spectrum analysis (MSSA) for extracting and separating the mother heart signal, the fetal...

The association of congenital heart defects with trisomy 21 was reported over 50 years ago and heart defects remain one of the most common and lethal abnormalities present postnatally in individuals affected by Down syndrome1–4. The purpose of this Editorial is to review the use of second-trimester fetal echocardiography as an adjunct to the genetic sonogram from a clinical perspective, based o...

Isolated cardiac muscle techniques and studies of the chronically instrumented fetal lamb heart were employed to evaluate the ability of fetal myocardium to exhibit poststimulation potentiation. Isometric tension development and the response to paired electrical stimulation were significantly reduced in isolated fetal ventricular myocardium when compared to the adult (P less than 0.001). As in ...

OBJECTIVES The aims were to evaluate whether any changes in blood flow in fetal inferior vena cava (IVC) are observed during Atosiban tocolysis within the first 48 hours of therapy. METHODS Detailed Doppler evaluation of blood flow in fetal IVC was performed prior to Atosiban administration and after 24 and 48 hours respectively. Maternal and fetal heart rate was assessed. IVC Doppler indices...

Giant chorioangioma is a placental tumor associated with gestational complications such as preeclampsia, polyhydramnios and hemorrhage. In addition, this tumor might lead to the incidence of non-immune fetal hydrops, heart failure, anemia, thrombocytopenia, weight loss and death among neonates. In this case report, the clinical image of a term newborn (weighing 2800 g) with one-minute Apgar sco...

Analysis of movement activity is important since it enables detection of nonreactive fetal heart rate recordings. The aim of the study was to develop an algorithm for automated detection of the fetal movement activity (actogram), based on analysis of the Doppler ultrasound signal, and to evaluate a reliability of the actogram as a source of information about the fetal movements. Bandpass filter...