Computerized Cardiotocography: A Software to Generate Synthetic Signals

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in developing computerized methods to analysecardiotocographic recordings, due to the widespread use of cardiotocography to record foetal heart rate and uterineactivity signals and the recognized inter and intra-observer variability in the visual evaluation of these signals, inrecent years there has been an increasing interest in developing computerized methods to analyse cardiotocographicrecordings. As a result of this trend, new biomedical software and analysing algorithms have been enforced to replacethe traditional interpretation of cardiotocographic traces. Artificial cardiotocographic signals play a predominant role intesting performance of these software. The present study presents a software for simulating synthetic cardiotocographicrecordings developed in order to cover a wide range of physiological conditions and recording situations. It allows thesimulation of the main features and characteristics of a real cardiotocographic trace (baseline fluctuation, accelerations,decelerations and contractions). Moreover, it permits the simulation of anomalies due to the acquisition system and/or cardiac arrhythmia (signal loss and outliers). All the parameters used in the simulation can be set and modified atuser choice. The proposed software, which generates synthetic signals resembling real cardiotocographic recordings,facilitates the comparison of different signal processing methods in order to establish their performances and could beemployed also as a teaching tool for demonstration to medical students and others