Improving the efficacy of automated fetal state assessment with fuzzy analysis of delivery outcome

A number of methods of the qualitative assessment of fetal heart rate (FHR) signals are based on supervised learning. The classification methods based on the supervised learning require a set of training recordings accompanied by the reference interpretation. In the real data collections the class of signals related to fetal distress is usually under-represented. Too small percentage of distress patterns adversely affects the effectiveness of the automated evaluation of the fetal state. The paper presents a method of equalizing the class sizes based on the reference assessment of the fetal state with the fuzzy analysis of the newborn attributes. The supervised learning with increased number of the FHR signals, which are characterized by the highest rate of the fuzzy inference leads to significant increase of the efficacy of the qualitative assessment of the fetal state using the Lagrangian support vector machine.