A Combined Independent Source Separation and Quality Index Optimization Method for Fetal ECG Extraction from Abdominal Maternal Leads

The non-invasive fetal electrocardiogram (fECG) technique has recently received considerable interest in monitoring fetal health. The aim of our paper is to propose a novel fECG algorithm based on the combination of the criteria of independent source separation and of a quality index optimization (ICAQIO-based). The algorithm was compared with two methods applying the two different criteria independently—the ICA-based and the QIO-based methods—which were previously developed by our group. All three methods were tested on the recently implemented Fetal ECG Synthetic Database (FECGSYNDB). Moreover, the performance of the algorithm was tested on real data from the PhysioNet fetal ECG Challenge 2013 Database. The proposed combined method outperformed the other two algorithms on the FECGSYNDB (ICAQIO-based: 98.78%, QIO-based: 97.77%, ICA-based: 97.61%). Significant differences were obtained in particular in the conditions when uterine contractions and maternal and fetal ectopic beats occurred. On the real data, all three methods obtained very high performances, with the QIO-based method proving slightly better than the other two (ICAQIO-based: 99.38%, QIO-based: 99.76%, ICA-based: 99.37%). The findings from this study suggest that the proposed method could potentially be applied as a novel algorithm for accurate extraction of fECG, especially in critical recording conditions.

[1]  Joachim Behar,et al.  A Comparison of Single Channel Fetal ECG Extraction Methods , 2014, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[2]  Reza Sameni,et al.  Noninvasive fetal ECG: The PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2013 , 2013, Computing in Cardiology 2013.

[3]  Manjiri Dighe,et al.  Ultrasound of fetal cardiac anomalies. , 2011, AJR. American journal of roentgenology.

[4]  E. Tegnander,et al.  Prenatal detection of heart defects in a non‐selected population of 30 149 fetuses—detection rates and outcome , 2006, Ultrasound in obstetrics & gynecology : the official journal of the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

[5]  Eric Moulines,et al.  A blind source separation technique using second-order statistics , 1997, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..

[6]  G. Saha,et al.  Fetal ECG extraction from single-channel maternal ECG using singular value decomposition , 1997, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[7]  Jun Li,et al.  Advances in Fetal Echocardiography: Early Imaging, Three/Four Dimensional Imaging, and Role of Fetal Echocardiography in Guiding Early Postnatal Management of Congenital Heart Disease , 2013, Echocardiography.

[8]  Gari D Clifford,et al.  An open-source framework for stress-testing non-invasive foetal ECG extraction algorithms , 2016, Physiological measurement.

[9]  Asoke K. Nandi,et al.  Noninvasive fetal electrocardiogram extraction: blind separation versus adaptive noise cancellation , 2001, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[10]  Jinwei Sun,et al.  A multichannel nonlinear adaptive noise canceller based on generalized FLANN for fetal ECG extraction , 2015 .

[11]  J. Roos‐Hesselink,et al.  Birth prevalence of congenital heart disease worldwide: a systematic review and meta-analysis. , 2011, Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

[12]  Hagen Malberg,et al.  Robust fetal ECG extraction and detection from abdominal leads , 2014, Physiological measurement.

[13]  Alberto Macerata,et al.  A multi-step approach for non-invasive fetal ECG analysis , 2013, Computing in Cardiology 2013.

[14]  M. Peters,et al.  Monitoring the fetal heart non-invasively: a review of methods , 2001, Journal of perinatal medicine.

[15]  Boreom Lee,et al.  Sequential Total Variation Denoising for the Extraction of Fetal ECG from Single-Channel Maternal Abdominal ECG , 2016, Sensors.

[16]  Jeffrey C. Lagarias,et al.  Convergence Properties of the Nelder-Mead Simplex Method in Low Dimensions , 1998, SIAM J. Optim..

[17]  S. Cerutti,et al.  Variability analysis of fetal heart rate signals as obtained from abdominal electrocardiographic recordings , 1986, Journal of perinatal medicine.

[18]  Gari D Clifford,et al.  Non-invasive fetal ECG analysis , 2014, Physiological measurement.

[19]  P. Strobach,et al.  Event-synchronous cancellation of the heart interference in biomedical signals , 1994, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[20]  K. Zuo,et al.  Effectiveness of prenatal screening for congenital heart disease: assessment in a jurisdiction with universal access to health care. , 2013, The Canadian journal of cardiology.

[21]  Sebastian Zaunseder,et al.  An ECG simulator for generating maternal-foetal activity mixtures on abdominal ECG recordings , 2014, Physiological measurement.

[22]  John A. Nelder,et al.  A Simplex Method for Function Minimization , 1965, Comput. J..

[23]  E. Arleo,et al.  Outcome of Early First-Trimester Pregnancies (<6.1 Weeks) With Slow Embryonic Heart Rate , 2011 .

[24]  Said Raghay,et al.  A new method for the extraction of fetal ECG from the dependent abdominal signals using blind source separation and adaptive noise cancellation techniques , 2015, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling.

[25]  L. Billeci,et al.  An efficient unsupervised fetal QRS complex detection from abdominal maternal ECG , 2014, Physiological measurement.

[26]  Aapo Hyvärinen,et al.  Fast and robust fixed-point algorithms for independent component analysis , 1999, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks.

[27]  Werner Wolf,et al.  Basic Aspects Concerning the Event-Synchronous Interference Canceller , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[28]  Alberto Macerata,et al.  A new method for QRS complex detection in multichannel ECG: Application to self-monitoring of fetal health , 2017, Comput. Biol. Medicine.

[29]  Carlo Marchesi,et al.  Performance Comparison of Fast QRS Detection Algorithms , 1984 .

[30]  Christian Jutten,et al.  A Deflation Procedure for Subspace Decomposition , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[31]  Gari D Clifford,et al.  A practical guide to non-invasive foetal electrocardiogram extraction and analysis , 2016, Physiological measurement.

[32]  Massimo Mischi,et al.  A robust fetal ECG detection method for abdominal recordings , 2007, Physiological measurement.

[33]  M. Tarvainen,et al.  Principal component model for maternal ECG extraction in fetal QRS detection , 2014, Physiological measurement.

[34]  Rui Rodrigues,et al.  Fetal beat detection in abdominal ECG recordings: global and time adaptive approaches , 2014, Physiological measurement.

[35]  Joos Vandewalle,et al.  Fetal electrocardiogram extraction by blind source subspace separation , 2000, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[36]  B. Widrow,et al.  Adaptive noise cancelling: Principles and applications , 1975 .

[37]  Dirk Callaerts,et al.  Comparison of SVD methods to extract the foetal electrocardiogram from cutaneous electrode signals , 1990, Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing.

[38]  E. Arleo,et al.  Outcome of early first-trimester pregnancies (< 6.1 weeks) with slow embryonic heart rate. , 2011, AJR. American journal of roentgenology.

[39]  Roberto Rinaldo,et al.  Separation and Analysis of Fetal-ECG Signals From Compressed Sensed Abdominal ECG Recordings , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[40]  J. Cardoso,et al.  Blind beamforming for non-gaussian signals , 1993 .

[41]  S Cerutti,et al.  The clinical relevance of the abdominal fetal electrocardiogram. , 1986, Journal of perinatal medicine.

[42]  H. Jongsma,et al.  Electrical properties of tissues involved in the conduction of foetal ECG , 1989, Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing.

[43]  Guangchen Liu,et al.  An adaptive integrated algorithm for noninvasive fetal ECG separation and noise reduction based on ICA-EEMD-WS , 2015, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing.

[44]  Gari D Clifford,et al.  Combining and benchmarking methods of foetal ECG extraction without maternal or scalp electrode data , 2014, Physiological measurement.