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DEVICE AND SYSTEM FOR REMOTE FOR IN-CLINIC TRANS-ABDOMINAL/VAGINAL/CERVICAL ACQUISITION, AND DETECTION, ANALYSIS, AND COMMUNICATION OF MATERNAL UTERINE AND MATERNAL AND FETAL CARDIAC AND FETAL BRAIN ACTIVITY FROM ELECTRICAL SIGNALS

  • US 6,816,744 B2
  • Filed: 05/28/2002
  • Issued: 11/09/2004
  • Est. Priority Date: 05/29/2001
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method for characterizing uterine electrical activity, comprising:

  • a. applying an action potential measuring multi-polar arrangement of electrodes to an abdominal, vaginal or cervical surface of a patient;

    b. isolating a system from the patient for analog filtering and amplifying an electrical signal as appropriate to isolate desired frequency components of said signal from background noise in said signal;

    c. acquiring analog electrical uterine, maternal or fetal cardiac signals, fetal brain signals, or a combination thereof transmitted through said electrodes at a sampling frequency between about 0.5 and 1 kHz for a duration of time sufficient to record at least 3 bursts of action electrical potentials from said signals;

    d. removing unwanted signal components through a multi-channel noise elimination scheme to generate reduced noise signals;

    e. storing said reduced noise signals;

    f. using detection algorithms to detect one or more attributes of said uterine, maternal or fetal cardiac activity, fetal brain activity, or combination thereof that are present in said acquired signals;

    g. analyzing at least a portion of said activity, indicating parameters from at least one burst of the action potentials within the stored signals;

    h. characterizing said activity from said patient based on said parameter analysis;

    i. determining electrically when contractions occur;

    j. simulating data output of a tocodynamometer or an intra-uterine pressure catheter; and

    k. predicting when a patient will go into labor or delivery, or a combination thereof.

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