Swarm Decomposition of Abdominal Signals for Non-invasive Fetal ECG Extraction.

Abstract

The non-invasive fetal electrocardiography (fECG) extraction from maternal abdominal signals is one of the most promising modern fetal monitoring techniques. However, the noninvasive fECG signal is heavily contaminated with noise and overlaps with other prominent signals like the maternal ECG. In this work we propose a novel approach in non-invasive fECG extraction using the swarm decomposition (SWD) to isolate the fetal components from the abdominal signal. Accompanied with the use of higher-order statistics (HOS) for R peak detection, the application of the proposed method to the Abdominal and Direct Fetal ECG PhysioNet Database resulted in fetal R peak detection sensitivity of 99.8% and a positive predictability of 99.8%. Our results demonstrate the applicability of SWD and its potentiality in extracting fECG of good morphological quality with more deep decomposition levels, in order to connect the extracted structural characteristics of the fECG with the health status of the fetus.Clinical Relevance- The developed method shows improvement in fetal R peak detection for certain signals.