Abdominal Signals: Denoising by Application of the Event Synchronuous Canceller

The electrical activity recorded on the abdomen during pregnancy and labor (abdominal signals, ADS) contains vital information about the health state of both mother and fetus. The most important signal related with the health of fetus, extensively studied by now, is the fetal ECG (fECG) which allows physicians to examine the evolution of the fetus and to identify possible heart diseases of fetus. The movement of the fetus which shows up in the electrohysterogram (EHG), extracted from ADS, indicates a normal pregnancy. This paper presents a method of removing the maternal ECG (mECG) from ADS in order extract the EHG and to obtain information about the uterine contractions and fetal movements. After removing the mECG and the fECG, the ADS, filtered in the frequency range of the uterine activity, is further used to predict labor or preterm labor. The ADS, cleaned from the mECG allows also the analysis of the fECG for fetal monitoring.