Multi-scale characteristics of resampled fetal heart rate pattern provide novel fetal developmental indices

The increasing functional integrity of the organism during fetal maturation is connected with increasing complex internal coordination mediated by the autonomic nervous system. We hypothesize that time scales of complex and dynamic inter-dependencies over more than one heart beat interval reflect the increasing complex adjustments within the fetal organism during its prenatal development. We investigated multi-scale complexity and time irreversibility from equidistantly resampled heart rate time series of 73 fetal magnetocardiographic recordings over the third trimester. We found scale dependent changes in complexity and time irreversibility. The functions obtained from equidistantly resampled heart rate time series showed qualitatively similar curves compared to those obtained from heart beat intervals series previously reported. Time scales of fetal heart rate characteristics may provide novel information for the identification of developmental disorders in prenatal diagnosis.