Fetal ECG representation using recurrence plot analysis

The field of electrocardiography (ECG) has been in existence for over a century, but the analysis of fetal ECGs is still in its infancy. This is, partly due to a lack of availability of elegant standard databases, partly due to the relatively low signal to noise ratio of the fetal ECG compared to maternal ECG. In this paper we applied recurrence plot analysis method for noninvasively recorded abdominal ECG. This method is based on the analysis of recurrences of the state space trajectory of the system under analysis that has been employed especially for studying chaotic dynamical systems like ECG signals. The method is successfully applied to reduce the effect of noise on the ECG signal and represent fetal component that is not completely hidden by the maternal ECG.