Preterm-Term Birth Classification Using EMD-Based Time-Domain Features of Single-Channel Electrohysterogram Data

Abstract The preterm birth anticipation is a crucial task that can reduce the rate of preterm birth and also the complications of preterm birth. Electrohysterogram (EHG) or uterine electromyogram (EMG) data have been evidenced that they can provide an information useful for preterm birth anticipation. Four distinct time-domain features, i.e., mean absolute value, average amplitude change, difference absolute standard deviation value, and log detector, commonly applied to EMG signal processing are applied and investigated in this study. A single-channel of EHG data is decomposed into its constituent components, i.e., intrinsic mode functions, using empirical mode decomposition (EMD) before their time-domain features are extracted. The time-domain features of intrinsic mode functions of EHG data associated with preterm and term births are applied for preterm-term birth classification using support vector machine (SVM) with a radial basis function. The preterm-term classifications are validated using 10-fold cross validation. From the computational results, it is shown that the excellent preterm-term birth classification can be achieved using a single-channel of EHG data. The computational results further suggest that the best overall performance on preterm-term birth classification is obtained when thirteen (out of sixteen) EMD-based time-domain features are applied. The best accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and F1-score achieved are, respectively, 0.9382, 0.9130, 0.9634, and 0.9366.