... more
about the
people
Former members 
Motivation
There are many open
questions concerning the
functioning of
the human uterus. One of these open questions concerns
exactly how the
uterus
operates as an organ to perform the very organized act of contracting
in a
synchronized fashion to expulse a new human in to this
world. If we
don’t
understand how it works when it is working normally it is obvious that
we will
not be as capable of intervening or preventing
when, sometimes with
tragic
consequences, it does not do its job properly and a child is born
before it is
ready.The aim of our research
is twofold: we want to be able to
understand
what the electrical activity of the uterus can tell us about
the
risk of premature birth and we simply want to understand better how the
uterus
works.
This
idea of using the externally
detected electrical activity of the
uterus (electrohysterogram
or EHG) to predict preterm labor is not new
and lot of
work has already been put in to it. The
novel approach in this work is
not to
use the signal from one or two isolated places on the abdomen of the
expectant
mother but to map the
propagation of the signals and to investigate the
auto
organization of the contractions and to use a matrix of electrodes
to
give us a much more complete
picture the organisation and operation of
the uterus as pregnancy reaches its conclusion.
More recently the
efforts of the team and its international collaborators have turned towards
the developement and application of patient specific multiscale
systems biology models. These models can be used to
identify the underlying causes of the form and propagation
of the signals observed on the subjects abdomen.
International collaborations
Resources
ERASysBio : BioMod UE_PTL - Biophysical Modelling of the Uterine Electromygram for understanding and preventing Pre term Labor.
2010-2013
Electrode attchment video
Videos of the
propagation of the EHG signal on the maternal abdomen.