Fetal Electrocardiogram Enhancement by Time-Sequenced Adaptive Filtering

An adaptive method for performing optimal time-varying filtering of nonstationary signals having a recurring statistical character, e.g., recurring pulses in noise, has been proposed. This method, called time-sequenced adaptive filtering, is applied to the enhancement of abdominally derived fetal electrocardiograms against background muscle noise. It is shown that substantial improvement in terms of signal distortion is obtained when time-sequenced filtering, rather than conventional time-invariant filtering, is employed. The method requires two or more abdominal channels containing correlated signal components, but uncorrelated muscle noise components. The location of the fetal pulses in time must be estimated in order to synchronize the filter´s time-varying impulse response to the fetal cardiac cycle.