Adaptive detection of the fetus ECG signal

Abstract

Extracting the fetal ECG signal from the composite maternal ECG signal obtained from abdominal leads is of great interest. The interfering maternal ECG signal is stronger than the fetal ECG one. Moreover, the background noise due to muscle activity and fetal motion strongly degrades the detection capability of the fetal ECG signal. A scheme based on the joint operation of an adaptive noise canceller (ANC) and an adaptive line enhancer (ALE) is proposed to detect the fetus ECG signal from the maternal ECG signal. The proposed scheme exhibits a great improvement in the output signal-to-noise ratio. Moreover, the heart rate of the detected fetal ECG signal is calculated and traced over a period of time to help in the discovery of fetal heart disease. Several cases for various weeks of the gestation period for pregnant women are analyzed.