Towards Non-invasive Labour Detection: A Free-Living Evaluation

In this paper we show early evidence of the feasibility of detecting labour during pregnancy, non-invasively and in free-living. In particular, we present machine learning models aiming at dealing with the challenges of unsupervised, free-living data collection, such as identifying periods of high quality data and detecting physiological changes as labour approaches. During a first phase, physiological data including electrohysterography (EHG, the electrical activity of the uterus), heart rate (HR) and gestational age (GA) were collected in laboratory conditions for model development. In particular, data were collected 1) during simulated activities of daily living, aiming at eliciting artifacts and developing diagnostic models for free-living data 2) during pregnancy, including labour, aiming at developing labour probability models from clean, supervised physiological recordings. Machine learning models using datasets 1) and 2) were deployed in free-living, longitudinally, in 142 pregnant women, between week 22 of pregnancy and delivery. A total of 1014 hours of data and an average of 7 hours per person were collected. Output of the developed models was analyzed to determine the feasibility of detecting labour non-invasively using physiological data, acquired with a single sensor placed on the abdomen. Results showed that the probability of being in labour for recordings collected during the last 24 hours of pregnancy was consistently higher than the probability during any other pregnancy week. Thus, non-invasive labour detection from physiological data seems promising.