Imperial College London
Portrait Picture

Dr Niamh Nowlan

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Bioengineering

Visiting Reader
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 5189n.nowlan Website

 
 
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Location

 

4.10Royal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Lai:2018:10.1371/journal.pone.0195728,
author = {Lai, J and Woodward, R and Alexandrov, Y and Munnee, QA and Lees, CC and Vaidyanathan, R and Nowlan, NC},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0195728},
journal = {PLoS One},
pages = {1--14},
title = {Performance of a wearable acoustic system for fetal movement discrimination},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195728},
volume = {13},
year = {2018}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Fetal movements (FM) are a key factor in clinical management of high-risk pregnancies such as fetal growth restriction. While maternal perception of reduced FM can trigger self-referral to obstetric services, maternal sensation is highly subjective. Objective, reliable monitoring of fetal movement patterns outside clinical environs is not currently possible. A wearable and non-transmitting system capable of sensing fetal movements over extended periods of time would be extremely valuable, not only for monitoring individual fetal health, but also for establishing normal levels of movement in the population at large. Wearable monitors based on accelerometers have previously been proposed as a means of tracking FM, but such systems have difficulty separating maternal and fetal activity and have not matured to the level of clinical use. We introduce a new wearable system based on a novel combination of accelerometers and bespoke acoustic sensors as well as an advanced signal processing architecture to identify and discriminate between types of fetal movements. We validate the system with concurrent ultrasound tests on a cohort of 44 pregnant women and demonstrate that the garment is capable of both detecting and discriminating the vigorous, whole-body ‘startle’ movements of a fetus. These results demonstrate the promise of multimodal sensing for the development of a low-cost, non-transmitting wearable monitor for fetal movements.
AU  - Lai,J
AU  - Woodward,R
AU  - Alexandrov,Y
AU  - Munnee,QA
AU  - Lees,CC
AU  - Vaidyanathan,R
AU  - Nowlan,NC
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pone.0195728
EP  - 14
PY  - 2018///
SN  - 1932-6203
SP  - 1
TI  - Performance of a wearable acoustic system for fetal movement discrimination
T2  - PLoS One
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195728
UR  - http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000431481700004&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
UR  - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195728
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/60037
VL  - 13
ER  -
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