Fetal ECG Extraction and QRS Detection using Independent Component Analysis

Fetal Electrocardiogram (fECG) is used for continuously monitor the fetal cardiac health condition. fECG signal extracted from abdominal signal (AECG) of pregnant woman is very helpful diagnosis methodology for evaluating health condition of fetus. Abdominal ECG signal contains different interference signal. The interference include Maternal Electrocardiogram (mECG), base line wandering artifact, maternal electromyogram (EMG) signal interference, power line interference and random electronic noises. In this paper we proposed a methodology for removing and filtering these artifact by using independent component analysis (ICA) and adaptive filtering technique. This methodology is an efficient mechanism for extracting fetal ECG signal, non-invasively taken from abdominal ECG. ICA method have relatively high SNR and it is nonparametric. The observed result shows proposed method is useful for calculating fECG.