Relationship between electrohysterogram and internal uterine pressure: a preliminary study

Electrohysterography (EHG) is a promising technique for monitoring the uterine activity, based on electrical recordings on the abdominal surface. However, a quantitative estimation of the internal uterine pressure (IUP) by means of EHG is not available for clinical practice. In this paper we present a preliminary study on the estimation of the mechanical uterine activity from abdominal EHG measurements. For the EHG analysis we use two different Time Frequency Distributions (TFD): the spectrogram and the Wigner-Ville Distribution. We assume the EHG to be the sum of frequency modulated signals. Based on this assumption, the IUP is estimated from the unnormalized first moment of the TFD. Eventually, a third order polynomial model is applied to the estimated IUP in order to improve the estimate accuracy. A recent method for detection of uterine contraction by EHG is employed for comparison of the performance. The algorithms were tested on two patient recordings. The results were compared with a reference IUP which is simultaneously measured by an intrauterine catheter. The IUP estimated by our method showed a correlation coefficient with the reference IUP (R=0.93) higher than that achieved by the comparison method (R=0.85). Therefore the proposed method may be considered as a promising clinical technique for accurate non invasive IUP measurements