New techniques for analysis of fetal electrocardiogram

Non-invasive fetal electrocardiography may revolutionize perinatal diagnostics in near future. Fetal ECG (FECG) is being extracted from signals recorded on mother’s abdomen. Apart from interesting FECG, the abdominal signal contains interference from mother’s ECG and uterine activity. The major problem is efficient elimination of maternal ECG signal, which energy is several times higher than that of fetal ECG. Furthermore, power spectra of fetal and maternal ECG overlap which makes the use of traditional frequency domain filtering methods difficult. In this paper, an alternative method of spatial filtering is presented, which has been implemented in fetal diagnostic system used in high-risk pregnancy.