INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF MATERNAL ALCOHOL INTAKE ON HUMAN FETAL BREATHING RATE USING ADAPTIVE TIME-FREQUENCY ANALYSIS-METHODS

In this study, the matching pursuit (MP) method which is a modified ve rsion of the wavelet transform (WT) method was proposed to examine the effects of alcohol on human fetal breathing rates in both time and fr equency domains. The matching pursuit method was chosen since the clas sical Fourier transform may not represent signals which have stationar y characteristics and wavelet transform may not represent signals whos e Fourier transforms have a narrow frequency support. Our results show that the horizontal structured atoms representing the sinusoidal acti vity at all frequency ranges disappeared and the vertical structured a toms representing the discontinuous spike type activity increased. In addition, the circular structured atoms at the high frequency range sh ifted to the low frequencies after the alcohol intake. The results als o suggested that the matching pursuit is most suitable for analyzing t he fetal breathing rate signals with and without alcohol intake.