Determining fetal heart rate using independent component analysis

Recording the fetal ECG (fECG) is a basic method of assessing the condition of the heart of the fetus. In most cases this signal is collected in a non-invasive manner, thus it is corrupted by the mother´s ECG (mECG). The separation of these two signals is still a challenge. On one hand, there is no standard for the placement of abdominal ECG electrodes and on the other hand, there exists no widely accepted general separation method yet. Our proposed approach is based on applying blind source separation via the FastICA method to baseline-free ECG signals. This method will offer the position of the R peaks of the fECG making it possible to determine the heart rate of the fetus. We found that the outcome of this method is highly dependent of the quality of the measurements and the amplitude of the fECG relative to the mECG.