Detection of fetal distress using independent component analysis

Abstract

The abdominal electrocardiogram (aECG) which is the recording of the cardiac activity of both the mother and the fetus can be used as the signal from which the fetal ECG (FECG) is obtained. The main challenge is to extract the FECG, which is strongly distorted by maternal component of dominating energy and other artifacts. The intrapartum management of fetal distress is a challenge to obstetricians, compounded by difficulties in interpreting the fetal heart rate (FHR) pattern and confusion regarding the definition of asphyxia. Fetal asphyxia refers to acidosis resulting from progressive hypoxia in utero. FHR monitoring is sensitive and can detect hypoxic episodes early in the evolution to acidosis. Electronic FHR monitoring can be introduced in the 3rd trimester as an attempt to reduce or eliminate the potentially disastrous consequences of fetal asphyxia. In this paper, the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) technique is applied to the raw aECG signal, which effectively eliminates the maternal ECG (MECG) to a large extent. The strong channel containing the FECG is then applied to the fetal QRS (FQRS) detector to obtain fetal heart rates (FHR). The proposed system correctly estimated the fetal R peaks for most records for the non-invasive abdominal and direct fetal electrocardiogram physionet database.