Non-Invasive Fetal Well-Being Monitoring Based Signals Approaches: A Mini Review

Abstract

Fetal monitoring is essential to ensure the well-being of both mother and fetal. This paper reviews the existing non-invasive fetal well-being monitoring based signal techniques. The current state of knowledge on fetal monitoring is summarised. Limitations and drawbacks of the research work involving existing fetal monitoring reviewed are discussed in the paper. A search strategy is conducted by using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology which involves the search in six databases namely, ACM, Emerald Publishing, IEEE Explore Digital Library, Science Direct, Scopus, and Springer. A total of 234 studies are identified and only 10 studies are included in the review study after the eligibility assessment. The findings presented reveal the limitations of the current technologies regarding fetal monitoring. Based on the review, it can be concluded that fetal electrocardiography (fECG) and transabdominal fetal pulse oximetry (TfPO) outperform other approaches in fetal well-being monitoring and should be the focus of future biomedical research. Future research on fECG should emphasise the search for the ideal number of electrodes and proper placement configuration to capture the best fetal signal quality in fetal monitoring. Meanwhile, continuous development of photoplethysmography (PPG)-based technique for TfPO ensures the enabling of the establishment of publicly available fetal PPG signals databases for the use of medical data in research.