Fetal ECG extraction from maternal skin electrodes using blind source separation and adaptive noise cancellation techniques

The extraction of the fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) from maternal cutaneous electrode recordings accepts a blind source separation (BSS) formulation. From this perspective, the problem reduces to the estimation of the independent sources of fetal cardiac bioelectric activity. In this contribution, a BSS method based on higher-order statistics is contrasted with a significant classical technique for FECG extraction, such as Widrow´s multi-reference adaptive noise cancellation. As a best-case scenario, optimal Wiener-Hopf filtering solutions are considered for this latter method. Both procedures are applied to real multi-channel ECG recordings obtained from a pregnant woman. The experimental outcome demonstrates the more robust performance of the blind technique in this important biomedical application