Key result
Increasing gestational age of fetuses was associated with increased complexity and information content of their PCG signals, with fractal dimension showing significant variations.
Why the study?
Analyzing different fetal conditions is crucial to understand pregnancy development, which was investigated using complexity and information-based analyses of fetal PCG signals.
Observational (n=24)
Complexity and information-based analysis of fetal PCG signals, particularly fractal dimension, can be used to evaluate fetal development across gestational weeks.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
PCG fractal analysis may track fetal maturation; hypothesis-generating and requires prospective validation before clinical use.
One of the crucial areas of pregnancy research is to analyze the pregnancy development. For this purpose, scientists analyze the different conditions of fetuses to understand their development. In this paper, we conducted complexity and information-based analyses on Phonocardiogram (PCG) signals to investigate pregnancy development. We calculated the fractal dimension, approximate entropy, and sample entropy as the measures of complexity and the Shannon entropy as the measure of the information content of signals for 24 fetuses in four ranges of gestational weeks. Based on the obtained results, increasing the gestational age of fetuses is reflected on the increment of the complexity of their PCG signals. We also observed similar findings in the case of the information content of PCG signals. Among all calculated measures, the fractal dimension of PCG signals showed significant variations among different gestational weeks. The method of analysis can be used to evaluate the alterations of other biomedical signals of fetuses (e.g., heart rate) to investigate their development.
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Namazi et al. (2020) conducted an observational in Pregnancy (n=24). Gestational age vs. Earlier gestational weeks was evaluated on Complexity and information content of PCG signals (fractal dimension, approximate entropy, sample entropy, Shannon entropy). Increasing gestational age of fetuses was associated with increased complexity and information content of their PCG signals, with fractal dimension showing significant variations.
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