Cardiotocography (CTG) is the recording of fetal heartbeat activity using ultrasound transducers placed on the mother's abdomen. The signal obtained is the FHR, which exhibits characteristic patterns that allow for the assessment of the fetus's well-being, behavioral states, and nervous system development. Information on the GA is crucial in fetal state and development evaluation. The objective of this work is to develop a model able to predict the gestational age (GA) from the FHR. The chosen AI model is based on a modified ResNet architecture and was trained with FHR signals from healthy subjects. The model is then tested on both Healthy and Intra Uterine Growth Restricted (IUGR) fetuses.
This paradigm offers advantages such as eliminating the need for class balancing and opens up potential applications in various pathological conditions. The use of these AI methods was enabled by the NAPAMI database, from which we used 63342 signals over more than 80000 available. Preliminary results (R2: 0.50 in healthy and R2: 0.16 in IUGR) show that the proposed method is capable of detecting deviations from normal fetal development. We are working to improve robustness, interpretability, and performance to contribute to its applicability in real-world clinical settings.