Single-lead fetal electrocardiogram estimation by means of combining R-peak detection, resampling and comb filter

Minimal detecting electrodes are preferred to miniaturise fetal electrocardiogram (fECG) monitoring devices for application in non-clinical environments. In this paper, a new method to estimate the fECG using a single-lead abdominal signal is introduced. In this method, for a preprocessed abdominal ECG recording, we follow a multi-step procedure to estimate the fECG signal. First, the locations of the maternal R-peaks are detected. Each R–R interval in the abdominal signal is resampled to have the same number of samples by changing its corresponding sampling frequency. A comb filter, which has teeth that coincide with the harmonics of the maternal electrocardiogram (mECG), is applied to the resampled signal. Each R–R interval in the filtered signal is resampled again to recover its original sampling frequency, and the mECG signal is obtained. This mECG signal is subtracted from the abdominal signal, and the residual signal is considered to be a primary estimate of the fECG signal. The same procedure can be applied to the residual signal to enhance the fECG signal. Compared to two other single-lead-based methods, singular value decomposition and nonlinear state-space projection, the proposed method has shown improved robustness and fidelity in restoration of the fECG during testing with synthetic ECG signals and a real fetal ECG database from MIT-BIH PhysioBank.