Portable fetal ECG extractor from abdECG

This paper aims at creating an affordable fECG extractor by simplifying the process of fECG extraction from abdECG. Even though invasive fECG extraction is more accurate, noninvasive method of extraction has been preferred during prenatal considering the fetus's health. This makes the noninvasive fECG extraction an emerging and required field of research. This paper gives a fundamental idea to create a prototype for extracting the fetal ECG from abdominal ECG. The abdECG has been preprocessed by normalization and filtering. Based on thresholding and first order differentiation, the maternal peak has been identified from the preprocessed abdECG signal. Using the identified maternal peaks, QRS complex of mECG has been identified and the same has been cancelled out from abdECG to cull out the fECG. The resultant signal has been a combination of fECG and noise. The fetal peaks have been identified from the culled out signal. The identified fetal peaks provide information like the QRS complex of the fetus, fetus heart rate, diagnosis of any congenital disorder and other anomalies. This simplified algorithm has been implemented with high level language C and executed using Raspberry Pi. The execution results with a second delay and Raspberry Pi can create a standalone platform at any place and is handy. The system resulted in 100% accuracy when the selected channel happened to be near the fetus's heart. Even in other cases, it has proven to be good and effective. This shows that the system is affordable and practically useable.