Monitoring the fetal heart non-invasively:: a review of methods

Doppler ultrasound, ultrasound M-mode analysis, fetal electrocardiography, and fetal magnetocardiography are methods by which the fetal heart can be monitored noninvasively. In this paper, they are evaluated and compared. Customarily, it is solely the fetal heart rate, which is monitored using the Doppler ultrasound technique since it is both simple to use and cheap. However, this method inherently produces an averaged heart rate and therefore cannot give the beat-to-beat variability. Fetal electrocardiography has similar advantages, but in addition offers the potential for monitoring beat-to-beat variability and performing electrocardiogram morphological analysis. Its disadvantage is that its reliability is only 60 %, although it is the only technique that offers truly long-term ambulatory monitoring. Ultrasound M-mode analysis allows a estimation of atrial and ventricular coordination, as well as an estimation of PR intervals. Bradycardias, supraventricular tachycardias, extra systoles are readily diagnosed using this method although timing will be inaccurate. Fetal magnetocardiograms can be detected reliably and used for accurate beat-to-beat measurements and morphological analysis. Consequently, they can be used for the classification of arrhythmias and the diagnosis of a long QT syndrome and some congenital heart diseases.