'Monitoring FHR during a woman's most restful hours at home and providing urgent medical assistance in case of abnormality will prove to be very effective in the prevention of stillbirth and other prenatal complexities,' the researchers say.

They have now developed a device based on two small acoustic sensors that can easily monitor FHR and feed the information to a wave analyser in a bedside personal computer connected to the internet.

The first microphone is attached to the mother's abdomen to pick up the sound of foetus' heartbeat. The second is attached at a reasonable distance to pick up ambient and bodily noise.

Computer software can then subtract the 'noise' channel from the foetal sound to produce a 'wav' file that can be further analysed for medical anomalies.

The team points out that they have successfully tested their monitoring system on several women at various stages of pregnancy, said an Eurekalert statement.

These findings have been published in the International Journal of Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation.