Multilayer phantom for electical impedance testing of a fetal heartbeat

An irregular heartbeat is highly dangerous to an adult, and even more so to an unborn baby. Whether it is poor oxygenation or other more serious conditions, monitoring a fetus´s heartbeat is necessary to determine any health issues. While current methodologies are well received from the general public, there is much room for improvement. A potential solution to the drawbacks of common measuring devices is to use Electrical Impedance (EI) to quantify the fetal heart rate (FHR). Thus, it becomes necessary to test such a theory in laboratory conditions. In this paper, we will summarize the design, fabrication and testing of an ambulatory phantom that mimics the properties of the womb and fetus. This model has a degree of fidelity that is sufficient for verifying the efficacy of an EI-based FHR monitoring device; it is a testing environment with a high perception of realism, high fidelity to the real maternal environment´s effect on the signal, and durable performance for R&D efforts. In absence of human data, a computer simulation was created to provide a conceptual proof of the idea. The prototype under construction, if successful, holds a considerable significance in human womb tissue modeling for benchmark testing.