Multi-scale sample entropy and recurrence plots distinguish healthy from suffering foetus

International audienceCurrently, the assessment of the state of fetal well-being using ultrasound is a challenge in the obstetrical world. To assess the fetal well-being, parameters are derived from the fetal heart rate and fetal movements. We estimated the fetal heart rate using a multi-sensor, multi-gate pulsed Doppler system and we propose to study the complexity of heart rate by calculating the multi-scale entropy and the parameters deduced from the recurrence plots. The article presents a preliminary study that evaluates the relevance of complexity parameters in assessing the state of fetal well-being. Our results show that complexity parameters can distinguish healthy from suffering foetus