Spectral analysis of the fetal phonocardiogram

Abstract

Up to today the application of prenatal phonocardiography (PCG) is quite limited but certainly, with suited techniques, the PCG will enable the assessment of important physiological parameters. Important applications are the recording of the FHR, the determination of systolic and diastolic time intervals, the detection of heart diseases, and there is evidence that even the fetal stage of maturity can be monitored. Some of the mentioned parameters may be recorded from the time domain representation of the PCG, whereas others require its spectral analysis.