On the Use of Deep Learning Decompositions and Physiological Measurements for the Prediction of Preterm Pregnancies in a Cohort of Patients in Active Labor †

Preterm pregnancies are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality amongst children under the age of five. This is a global issue and has been identified as an area requiring active research. The emphasis now is to identify and develop methods of predicting the likelihood of preterm birth. This paper uses physiological data from a group of patients in active labor. The dataset contains information about fetal heart rate (FHR) and maternal heart rate (MHR) for all patients and electrohysterogram (EHG) recordings for the measurement of uterine contractions. For the physiological data analysis and associated signal processing, we utilize deep wavelet scattering (DWS). This is an unsupervised decomposition and feature extraction method combining characteristics from deep learning convolutions, as well as the classical wavelet transform, to observe and investigate the extent to which active preterm labor can be accurately identified from an acquired physiological signal, the results of which were compared with the metaheuristic linear series decomposition learner (LSDL). Additional machine learning algorithms are tested on the acquired physiological data to allow for the identification of optimal model architecture for this specific physiological data.