{"doi":"10.20944/preprints202401.0260.v1","title":"Evaluating the Efficacy of Cervical Tactile Ultrasound Technique as a Predictive Tool for Spontaneous Preterm Birth","abstract":"This study aims to explore the applicability of an innovative cervical tactile ultrasound approach for predicting spontaneous preterm birth (sPTB). Eligible participants were women with low-risk singleton pregnancies in their second trimester, enrolled in this prospective observational study. A Cervix Monitor (CM) device was designed with a vaginal probe comprising four tactile sensors and a single ultrasound transducer operating at 5 MHz. The probe enabled the application of controllable pressure to the external cervical surface, facilitating the acquisition of stress-strain data from both anterior and posterior cervical sectors. These data were used to calculate cervical elasticity, as a stress-to-strain ratio. CM examination data were analyzed for 127 women at 24 - 28 gestational weeks. PTB was observed in 6.3% (8 out of 127) of the cases. The preterm group exhibited a lower average cervical stress-to-strain ratio (elasticity) of 0.70±0.26 kPa/mm compared to the term group's 1.63±0.65 kPa/mm, with a significant p-value of 1.1×10-4. Diagnostic accuracy for predicting spontaneous preterm birth based solely on cervical elasticity data was found to be 95.0% (95% CI, 88.5–100.0). These findings suggest that measuring cervical elasticity with the designed tactile ultrasound probe could potentially predict spontaneous preterm birth in a cost-effective manner.","journal":"Preprints.org","year":2024,"id":489550,"datarank":0.10397207708399181,"base_score":0.6931471805599453,"endowment":0.6931471805599453,"self_citation_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.10397207708399181,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9617,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":426114,"name":"Todd Rosen","orcid":"0000-0001-5810-5129","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":661637,"name":"Jennifer Hill","orcid":"0000-0002-8909-073X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1324237,"name":"Meena Khandelwal","orcid":"0000-0002-7794-3176","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1324540,"name":"Victors Kurtenoks","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1139977,"name":"Brendan Francy","orcid":"0000-0003-1639-4377","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1139976,"name":"Noune Sarvazyan","orcid":"0000-0003-3704-0391","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":426115,"name":"Vladimir Egorov","orcid":"0000-0002-8467-7320","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":41,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:08:28.548530Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}