Comprehensive study on fetal ECG extraction

The most common type of defect with which babies are born is related to heart, nearly 1 out of every 100. A physician studies the electrical activity of the fetus´s heart, by monitoring the fetal Electrocardiogram (fECG) collected at the time of pregnancy from mother´s abdomen. Even though the signal acquisition and signal processing techniques has been made a great deal of progress, the extraction and analysis of Fetal ECG is still in its outset. Very low signal-to-noise ratio of the fetal ECG compared to the maternal ECG, is the biggest challenge faced by scientists working in this area. In this paper, we have reviewed a wide range of signal processing techniques for the extraction of fetal ECG, along with their shortcomings and advantages.