Analysis of fluctuations of uterine contractions under varied gestational ages is clinically significant. In this work, fluctuations associated with Preterm pregnancies are analyzed. For this, uterine electromyography (uEMG) signals in Preterm condition with varied gestational ages are considered. The signals are subjected to Adaptive Fractal Analysis (AFA) where a global trend is identified using overlapping windows of varying orders. The signal is detrended and fluctuation function is estimated. Hurst exponent features are extracted and analyzed statistically. Results show that AFA is able to characterize the variations in the fluctuations of Preterm uEMG signals. The feature values are distinct and vary with gestational age. Coefficient of variation is observed to be low, indicating that these features could handle inter-subject variability of Preterm signals. As early diagnosis of premature delivery is imperative for timely medical intervention and treatment, it appears that the proposed features could aid in determining the changes in uterine muscle contractions in Preterm condition.

中文翻译：

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利用肌电信号的自适应分形特征分析早产中子宫收缩的波动

分析不同胎龄下子宫收缩的波动具有临床意义。在这项工作中，分析了与早产相关的波动。为此，考虑了具有不同胎龄的早产条件下的子宫肌电图 (uEMG) 信号。信号经过自适应分形分析 (AFA)，其中使用不同阶的重叠窗口来识别全局趋势。信号被去趋势并且波动函数被估计。赫斯特指数特征被提取和统计分析。结果表明，AFA 能够表征早产 uEMG 信号波动的变化。特征值是不同的并且随胎龄而变化。观察到变异系数很低，表明这些特征可以处理早产信号的主体间变异性。由于早产的早期诊断对于及时的医疗干预和治疗是必不可少的，因此所提出的特征似乎可以帮助确定早产条件下子宫肌肉收缩的变化。