V. Prenatal and Perinatal Care Pediatrics and Nutrition Surveillance: Analysis of Fetal Heart Rate and Uterine Activity Signals by Using Apple II Plus Microcomputer

摘要

Intrapartum electronic fetal monitoring has been used widely for over a decade in obstetric practice. Its main purpose is to provide information about the labor and fetal conditions so that better obstetrical care can be provided. However, there is certain information obtained from monitoring which needs electronic or computer aids to make them useful clinically. This study describes the experience of using the Apple II plus microcomputer in obtaining and analyzing fetal heart rate and uterine activity signals from the intrapartum clinical monitor. This was done by building an analog-to-digital converting board and by using 6502 microprocessor machine language routines. Approximately 60 to 80 minutes of tracings can be processed before 30 kilobytes of memory are filled. The data is then transferred to a 5¼″ diskette for permanent storage and for future data reduction. With this approach, uterine activity units and fetal heart rate variability indices are calculated.