Non-invasive fetal electrocardiograph enhancement

The authors present an approach to enhance the fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) via a noninvasive procedure using a genetic algorithm (GA). Many different techniques have been developed for FECG detection and enhancement, all of which have some limitations. The proposed method has been designed to overcome most of the difficulties of previous methods for FECG enhancement without distorting and/or adding misleading information to the FECG. The genetic algorithm approach for FECG enhancement is based on substracting a pure maternal electrocardiogram (MECG) from an abdominal signal which contains the FECG and the MECG. The difference between straight subtraction and the genetic algorithm is the fact that the subtraction via a GA is a near-optimal subtraction which eliminates the MECG in the abdominal signal. Details of the techniques and results from clinical data are presented