Recoverable Structure and Measurement Uncertainty in Fetal ECG-to-Doppler Translation

Abstract

Translating electrical recordings into a Doppler waveform raises two separate questions: how well a model predicts the recorded target, and what its errors reveal about fetal physiology. This methodological evidence synthesis examines that distinction using a recent fetal-maternal ECG-to-Doppler framework. The motivating study combines dilated convolutions and attention and reports evaluation on 885 synchronized segments from 39 pregnancies. Its signal-level results justify examining cross-modal predictability, while leaving the interpretation of residual waveforms dependent on measurement, synchronization, model capacity, and population transfer. We propose an evaluation sequence that begins with the measurement definition, preserves pregnancy-level separation during model selection, and reports temporal agreement alongside spectral and heart-rate error. Maternal-input ablations are treated as tests of predictive information rather than direct estimates of causal coupling. The article conducts no new clinical analysis or model training. Its contribution is an evidence framework for deciding which physiological claims a waveform reconstruction can support and which require additional observations.