Title: WAF extraction methods of foetal electrocardiogram

Authors: R. Swarnalatha, D.V. Prasad

Addresses: BITS Pilani – Dubai, Plot No. UG 06, P.O. Box 345055, Dubai International Academic City, Dubai, UAE. ' BITS Pilani – Dubai, Plot No. UG 06, P.O. Box 345055, Dubai International Academic City, Dubai, UAE

Abstract: The well-being and status of the fetus can be assessed from foetal electrocardiogram (fECG) signal. Extraction of the fECG that is embedded in the maternal ECG (mECG) is a challenging problem. In this paper, a wavelet decomposition along with two-stage adaptive filtering (WAF) is used to extract the fECG from the maternal abdominal signal. fECG extraction is from two signals recorded at the thoracic and abdominal areas of the mother|s skin. The thoracic ECG (tECG) is assumed to be almost completely maternal whereas the abdominal ECG (aECG) is considered to be composite, as it contains both the mother|s and fetus ECG signals. The proposed four methods are applied to real ECG signals. The test results show that the proposed algorithms are capable of extracting the fECG signal and the results are presented.

Keywords: fECG extraction; mECG; tECG; aECG; adaptive filtering; wavelet transform; fetus assessment; foetal electrocardiogram; foetal ECG; thoracic ECG; abdominal ECG; maternal ECG; wavelet decomposition.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2011.041462

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2011 Vol.6 No.3, pp.217 - 231

Published online: 21 Jan 2015 *

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