Patent ID: 6816744
Filing Date: 2004-11-09
Classification: A61B

Abstract:
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.