Non-invasive extraction of fetal electrocardiogram using fast independent component analysis technique

Fetal electrocardiogram (fECG) provides clinically important information concerning the electrophysiological state of a fetus. The fECG contains activity of electrical depolarization and repolarization of fetal heart. In this paper a technique is proposed called Fast Independent Component Analysis (Fast ICA) to extract the fECG signals from the 20 sets of abdominal ECG signals. Using Fast ICA, 91.4% R peaks of fECG signals were extracted as validated by the direct fECG R peaks measured from scalp. The mother electrocardiogram (mECG) is extracted from the four channel abdominal ECGs, canceled and then the fECG is extracted. Bland Altman and correlation calculations showed no significant difference between the extracted fECG and direct fECG RR intervals. The correlation coefficient ρ was 0.84 and the p value was 0.