Barbara Selby

Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

June 11, 1991
(Phone: 703/557-5609)

Jean Drummond Clough

Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.
(Phone: 804/864-6122)

RELEASE: 91-90

LANGLEY TEAM CONTRIBUTOR TO PRENATAL CARE TECHNOLOGY

The application of sensor technology to an invention aimed

at identifying problem pregnancies has placed a Langley team,
headed by Dr. Allan J. Zuckerwar, in the forefront of an
innovative transfer of NASA science to a medical initiative.
The device is a fetal heart rate monitor designed to be
portable so the expectant mother can oversee the health of her
developing baby daily in her home.

Zuckerwar became involved when the Langley Technology

Utilization (TU) and Applications Office was contacted by Dr.
Donald A. Baker, M.D., of Spokane, Wash., who had developed the
concept but needed help with its practical implementation.
Baker's interest stemmed from his experience in treating
difficult pregnancies involving women who could not or would
not get adequate prenatal care -- hence the idea of providing
something that would signal the need for medical attention.

The fetal heart monitor is an excellent barometer of the

baby's health since its beat rate changes measurably in
response to such influences as maternal smoking, anemia, drug
abuse, alchohol abuse, choking the umbilical cord, high blood
pressure, extended gestation, diabetes or maternal infection.
In many of these situations, the baby could be healthy one day
and in a life threatening condition 24 hours later. A daily
monitor would sound an alarm and alert the mother to call her
clinic for help.

Zuckerwar's challenge was to adopt sensors and signal

processing equipment into a package that was small enough to be
portable, yet easy to apply and operate. He also needed to
avoid existing instrumentation which uses pulsed Doppler
ultrasound that is highly sensitive to abdominal position and
is bulky.

- more -
-2-

Zuckerwar decided upon passive, film-type acoustical sensors

which are flexible, rugged, chemically stable and which produce
voltage when loaded by pressure. These sensors have been used
by Langley researchers to measure surface pressures on aircraft
in flight and on wind tunnel models. In developing this
approach, he points to the help he got from E. Thomas Hall,
Jr., and Timothy D. Bryant, both of Langley's Fabrication
Division, who overcame extraordinary fabrication problems in
supporting the effort.

Zuckerwar's approach uses a center sensor surrounded by six

more in a circle. This array is mounted on a belt worn by the
mother. It is designed to do five things: detect pressure
pulses arriving at the abdominal surface of the mother, cancel
signals due to rigid body motion of the mother, shield against
radiostatic interference, insulate from environmental noise and
isolate the mother electrically from the signal processing
equipment.

The signal processor itself is the manager of the whole

system. For this sophisticated technology, Zuckerwar relied on
the expertise of two Old Dominion University colleagues,
electrical engineers Dr. John W. Stoughton and Dr. Robert A.
Pretlow, M.D. The system they devised uses a computer which
has been "trained" to recognize ideal fetal heart beat tones.
It also is able to select which of the seven sensors is
receiving the strongest signal. The computer then
discriminates, in real time, between normal signals from the
baby's heart and those that do not fit ideal parameters. In
the final commercial version, when an abnormal signal is
detected, an alarm would be sounded for the mother to seek
assistance.

The Langley effort to support Dr. Baker's commercial

interests in marketing the monitor is part of the NASA program
to transfer the agency's space age technology to the private
sector, according to Dr. Franklin H. Farmer of the TU office.
He adds that most of these transfers are to the medical
community and that this fetal heart monitor program was funded
by the TU office.

Zuckerwar, an electronics engineer in the Instrument

Research Division, is known internationally as an authority in
acoustics, aerodynamics and structural dynamics instrumentation
research programs. He is currently leading a
NASA/industry/university effort to develop high temperature
fiber optic technology which will be applied to advanced
sensors for use in hypersonic research in wind tunnels and on
future hypersonic aerospace vehicles. Zuckerwar holds
bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from
the Carnegie Institute of Technology and a doctoral degree from
the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany. He also did
postdoctoral work at Columbia University and was an associate
professor of electrical engineering at Youngstown State
University until 1973 when he joined NASA.
- end -

(Photographs are available from Langley Research Center to

illustrate this story.)