Preliminary global sensitivity analysis of a uterine electrical activity model

A comprehensive multiscale model of the uterine muscle electrical activity would permit understanding the important link between the genesis and evolution of the action potential at the cell level and the process leading to labor. Understanding this link can open the way to more effective tools for the prediction of labor and prevention of preterm delivery. For better results, these models and tools should be adapted to each patient. The first step toward this patient specific adaptation is to define which of the parameters must be identified and what are the signal features most suitable to do so. The sensitivity analysis of the model will enable us to answer this question. To study the sensitivity of the 26 model parameters, We use the principle of elementary effects as described by Morris [1] . We assume no prior knowledge of the possible variations of the parameters and use uniform distributions bounded by ±20% of their nominal value. As model output we considered not on the simulated EHG signal itself but 5 classical features extracted from the signal. The results we obtain are the ranking of the model parameters in order of sensitivity. With 4 of the features the list of sensitive parameter is very consistent, however there are some differences in the rankings.