Extraction of fetal electrocardiogram signal utilizing blind source separation based on time-frequency distributions and wavelet packet denoising

Abstract

A new method utilizing Blind Source Separation based on Time-Frequency distributions(TFBSS) and wavelet packet denosing was proposed to extract the Fetal ElectroCardioGram(FECG) signal.The original eight ElectroCardioGram(ECG) signals obtained from the thoracic and abdominal area of the pregnant woman were firstly processed to eight components by utilizing rearrangement TFBSS.Then the Maternal ECG(MECG) signal and noise components in eight components were set by zero and the rest components were reconstructed by using the mixing matrix.The FECG with noise could be extracted by separating the reconstructed result by using rearrangement TFBSS.Finally,the baseline shift and noise in FECG were suppressed by wavelet packet denoising technique.The FECG could be extracted even under the condition of the fetal QRS wave being partly and entirely overlapped with the maternal QRS wave in the abdominal composite signal.The experimental results show that the clear FECG can be extracted by utilizing the proposed method.