Fetal state evaluation with fuzzy analysis of newborn attributes using CUDA architecture

Cardiotocography is a biophysical method of fetal state evaluation involving the recording and analysis of the fetal heart rate (FHR). Since a proper interpretation of the signal is relatively difficult, an automatic classification is often based on computational intelligence methods. The quality of classifiers based on supervised learning algorithms depends on a proper selection of learning data. In case of the fetal state evaluation, the learning is usually based on a set of quantitative parameters of FHR signal and the corresponding reference information determined on the basis of the retrospective analysis of newborn attributes. Values of the single attribute have been used so far as a reference. As a result, a part of information on the actual neonatal outcome has always been lost. The following paper presents a method of the fuzzy reasoning leading to an evaluation of neonatal outcome as a function of three newborn attributes. The fuzzy system was used in the process of a qualitative evaluation of the fetal state based on quantitative analysis of FHR signal using a support vector machine (SVM). In order to improve computational effectiveness, the learning algorithm was implemented in Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). The results of these studies confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method and indicate the possibility of practical usage of the fuzzy system in supervised learning algorithms for the qualitative evaluation of the fetal state.