Application of artificial neural networks for detection of abnormal fetal heart rate pattern: a comparison with conventional algorithms

Abstract

Cardiotocography signals were sampled during labour in 53 patients. A recurrent artificial neural network with hidden layer feedback was trained and performance was compared with that of several conventional systems. Correct and false positive rates of all systems tested were calculated. To ensure that the performance of neural networks was not just caused by using different cut-off levels, the threshold used for conventional methods were also adapted and optimised. The correct positives rate of neural networks was between 0.72 and 0.9, and the false positive rate between 0.2 and 0.4. Before optimising, conventional algorithms produced a very low correct positive (0.02-0.5) and a low false positive rate (0.0-0.08). After adjusting the parameters, the tested neural networks still performed better than optimised conventional systems.