Fetal Survey via Abdominal Recorded Signals

Abstract

Fetal heart rate (fHR) and the morphological features of the fetal ECG (fECG) can be derived from (fECG) signals recorded on the maternal abdomen. However, when assessing the fECG through the abdominal signals (ADS), it’s very low amplitude causes a problem, since the fECG representation in the ADS is buried in a mixture of other signals with stronger energy. Thus, signal to noise ratio of these recordings is low, the maternal electrocardiogram (mECG) being the main interference component. The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the performance of an algorithm for maternal ECG (mECG) subtraction. The performance of the algorithm considered in this study is evaluated by applying it on both simulated and real ADS signals.