Cardiotocography for Fetal Monitoring: Technical and Methodological Aspects

In this chapter, the basic principles of the computerized cardiotocography are illustrated. After a short historical reconstruction of this fetal monitoring technique, the hardware and software solutions adopted for measuring the fetal heart rate and the toco signals in current commercial cardiotocographs are briefly summarized. A major focus is dedicated to the methodologies for FHR analysis, starting from the extraction of classical morphological and time domain parameters, going through frequency analysis and concluding with advanced nonlinear indices, more recently proposed and adopted by researchers in the field. The chapter has been written taking into account our experience acquired in about 20 years of research in fetal monitoring.