Prediction of pregnancy-induced hypertension using coherence analysis

The paper presents a novel method to predict hypertensive disorders in pregnancy using coherence analysis. Previous studies suggest that there is inadequate secondary trophoblast invasion in hypertensive pregnancies implying that there are differences in the functional relationships between the maternal and fetal circulations. Magnitude squared coherence (MSC) is a function with values between 0 and 1 that indicates how well two waveforms correspond to each other in the frequency domain. The results presented using the MSC of maternal and fetal blood flow velocity waveforms indicate that in complicated hypertensive pregnancies its value is lower than in non-hypertensive controls. With additional validation, this method has the potential to provide an early test for hypertensive obstetric complications.