Towards noise immune detection of fetal QRS complexes

Received 8 April 2009; received in revised form 19 June 2009; accepted 8 September 2009.

Abstract

The noninvasive fetal electrocardiography is a source of more precise information on the fetal heart activity than the measurements based on Doppler ultrasound signals. However, the clinical diagnostic applications of this technique are limited by difficulty with successful detection of small amplitude fetal QRS complexes. In this study, we investigate the influence of different stages of fetal signals processing on the detection performance. The main propositions of the paper are: application of normalized matched filtering to fetal QRS complexes enhancement and a new approach to the final detection of the complexes. Compared to the classical detectors, the proposed new one allows a significant increase of the detection performance for signals of very different quality.

Keywords: Fetal monitoring, Abdominal fetal electrocardiography, QRS detection, Normalized matched filtering, Projective filtering

a Institute of Electronics, Silesian University of Technology, Akademicka Street 16, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland

b Institute of Medical Technology and Equipment ITAM, Roosevelta Street 118, 41-800 Zabrze, Poland

Corresponding author. Tel.: +48 32 2372019.

PII: S0169-2607(09)00272-7

doi:10.1016/j.cmpb.2009.09.005

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