Optode Design Space Exploration for Clinically-robust Non-invasive Fetal Oximetry

Abstract

Non-invasive transabdominal fetal oximetry (TFO) has the potential to improve delivery outcomes by providing physicians with an objective metric of fetal well-being during labor. Fundamentally, the technology is based on sending light through the maternal abdomen to investigate deep fetal tissue, followed by detection and processing of the light that returns (via scattering) to the outside of the maternal abdomen. The placement of the photodetector in relation to the light source critically impacts TFO system performance, including its operational robustness in the face of fetal depth variation. However, anatomical differences between pregnant women cause the fetal depths to vary drastically, which further complicates the optical probe (optode) design optimization. In this paper, we present a methodology to solve this problem. We frame optode design space exploration as a multi-objective optimization problem, where hardware complexity (cost) and performance across a wider patient population (robustness) form competing objectives. We propose a model-based approach to characterize the Pareto-optimal points in the optode design space, through which a specific design is selected. Experimental evaluation via simulation and in vivo measurement on pregnant sheep support the efficacy of our approach.

The Deep Learning Solutions on Lossless Compression Methods for Alleviating Data Load on IoT Nodes in Smart Cities

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Convolver Design and Convolve-Accumulate Unit Design for Low-Power Edge Computing

“…Since AlexNet achieved outstanding achievements in the ImageNet Large-Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC), a lot of research teams have been devoted to the development of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with well-known research advances such as ZFNet, GoogleNet, VGG, ResNet, etc. Owing to the increasing demand for real-time applications, an efficient dedicated hardware computation unit (i.e., a CNN accelerator) is required to support the calculations [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ] in the inference process. Moreover, for edge devices, low power is also an important concern [ 7 , 8 , 9 ].…”

Estimating the Shape of the Fetal Pulse Curve for Transabdominal Pulse Oximetry using Synchronous Averaging

“…Transabdominal fetal pulsoximetry is a non-invasive method to continuously observe the fetal oxygen level [1], [4], [6]. The method is applicable with an intact amniotic sac during the latter half of pregnancy and may be used for long-term monitoring.…”

“…The method is applicable with an intact amniotic sac during the latter half of pregnancy and may be used for long-term monitoring. Light sources and detectors are placed on the belly of the pregnant woman to measure the photoplethysmogram (PPG) as shown is several previous works [4], [5], [2], [3], [6]. The measured signal consists of a mixture of the maternal and fetal pulse curves [4], [5], [10], [6].…”

“…Light sources and detectors are placed on the belly of the pregnant woman to measure the photoplethysmogram (PPG) as shown is several previous works [4], [5], [2], [3], [6]. The measured signal consists of a mixture of the maternal and fetal pulse curves [4], [5], [10], [6]. One major challenge of the method is the extraction of the fetal pulse curve [5], [10], [8].…”