TY - JOUR
T1 - Design and in Vivo Evaluation of a Non-Invasive Transabdominal Fetal Pulse Oximeter
AU - Fong, Daniel D.
AU - Yamashiro, Kaeli J.
AU - Vali, Kourosh
AU - Galganski, Laura A.
AU - Thies, Jameson
AU - Moeinzadeh, Rasta
AU - Pivetti, Christopher
AU - Knoesen, Andre
AU - Srinivasan, Vivek J.
AU - Hedriana, Herman L.
AU - Farmer, Diana L.
AU - Johnson, Michael Austin
AU - Ghiasi, Soheil
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received January 7, 2020; revised March 11, 2020 and April 21, 2020; accepted June 4, 2020. Date of publication June 9, 2020; date of current version December 21, 2020. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant IIS-1838939 and in part by CITRIS and the UC Davis College of Engineering. (Corresponding author: Daniel Fong.) Daniel D. Fong is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95616-5270 USA (e-mail: dfong@ucdavis.edu).
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Objective: Current intrapartum fetal monitoring technology is unable to provide physicians with an objective metric of fetal well-being, leading to degraded patient outcomes and increased litigation costs. Fetal oxygen saturation (SpO2) is a more suitable measure of fetal distress, but the inaccessibility of the fetus prior to birth makes this impossible to capture through current means. In this paper, we present a fully non-invasive, transabdominal fetal oximetry (TFO) system that provides in utero measures of fetal SpO2. Methods: TFO is performed by placing a reflectance-mode optode on the maternal abdomen and sending photons into the body to investigate the underlying fetal tissue. The proposed TFO system design consists of a multi-detector optode, an embedded optode control system, and custom user-interface software. To evaluate the developed TFO system, we utilized an in utero hypoxic fetal lamb model and performed controlled desaturation experiments while capturing gold standard arterial blood gases (SaO2). Results: Various degrees of fetal hypoxia were induced with true SaO2 values ranging between 10.5% and 66%. The non-invasive TFO system was able to accurately measure these fetal SpO2 values, supported by a root mean-squared error of 6.37% and strong measures of agreement with the gold standard. Conclusion: The results support the efficacy of the presented TFO system to non-invasively measure a wide-range of fetal SpO2 values and identify critical levels of fetal hypoxia. Significance: TFO has the potential to improve fetal outcomes by providing obstetricians with a non-invasive measure of fetal oxygen saturation prior to delivery.
AB - Objective: Current intrapartum fetal monitoring technology is unable to provide physicians with an objective metric of fetal well-being, leading to degraded patient outcomes and increased litigation costs. Fetal oxygen saturation (SpO2) is a more suitable measure of fetal distress, but the inaccessibility of the fetus prior to birth makes this impossible to capture through current means. In this paper, we present a fully non-invasive, transabdominal fetal oximetry (TFO) system that provides in utero measures of fetal SpO2. Methods: TFO is performed by placing a reflectance-mode optode on the maternal abdomen and sending photons into the body to investigate the underlying fetal tissue. The proposed TFO system design consists of a multi-detector optode, an embedded optode control system, and custom user-interface software. To evaluate the developed TFO system, we utilized an in utero hypoxic fetal lamb model and performed controlled desaturation experiments while capturing gold standard arterial blood gases (SaO2). Results: Various degrees of fetal hypoxia were induced with true SaO2 values ranging between 10.5% and 66%. The non-invasive TFO system was able to accurately measure these fetal SpO2 values, supported by a root mean-squared error of 6.37% and strong measures of agreement with the gold standard. Conclusion: The results support the efficacy of the presented TFO system to non-invasively measure a wide-range of fetal SpO2 values and identify critical levels of fetal hypoxia. Significance: TFO has the potential to improve fetal outcomes by providing obstetricians with a non-invasive measure of fetal oxygen saturation prior to delivery.
KW - fetal monitoring technology
KW - hypoxic fetal lamb
KW - Non-invasive medical devices
KW - pulse oximetry
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U2 - 10.1109/TBME.2020.3000977
DO - 10.1109/TBME.2020.3000977
M3 - Article
C2 - 32746021
AN - SCOPUS:85098589712
VL - 68
SP - 256
EP - 266
JO - IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
SN - 0018-9294
IS - 1
M1 - 9112327
ER -