Safe and reliable transabdominal fetal oximetry

A method for safely determining a fetal blood oxygenation level, comprising:

• activating at least one light source with at least two distinct wavelengths of light in a probe on an abdomen of a pregnant mammal to direct light into a maternal abdomen toward a fetus;
• receiving a set of mixed signals from a set of photodetectors positioned at different locations on the maternal abdomen from reflected light of the at least two distinct wavelengths that traverses maternal tissue or maternal and fetal tissue;
• providing a motion sensor in the probe and filtering the set of mixed signals received from the set of photodetectors with data from the motion sensor to produce a set of motion-filtered mixed signals;
• producing a composite fetal signal from the set of motion-filtered mixed signals;
• assessing a quality of the composite fetal signal;
• determining the fetal blood oxygenation level by performing computations on the composite fetal signal produced from the mixed signals;
• and
• ensuring a skin temperature of the maternal abdomen does not rise to unsafe levels due to the activation of the at least one light source using the assessed signal quality to determine parameters applied to the at least one light source to insure safe skin temperature levels.