FETAL HEART RATE EXTRACTION FROM MATERNAL ABDOMINAL ECG RECORDINGS

摘要

FIELD: medicine.;SUBSTANCE: method for extracting fetal heart rate from a measured ECG signal, comprising a fetal ECG signal, a maternal ECG signal and noise, is performed using a system comprising a computer processor, instruction memory, a peak detector, a signal stacker, a spatial filter and a fetal QRS identifier. Computer processor receives abdominal ECG signals from sensors attached to the patient. Each measured ECG signal is recorded and digitised in a buffer of measured ECG signals. Peak detector identifies potential peaks in the buffer of measured ECG signals. Signal stacker stacks and divides the digitised measured ECG signals recorded in the signal buffer into snippets, each of which includes one potential peak. Spatial filter identifies and attenuates the maternal QRS signal on the snippets in the buffer of measured ECG signals. Spatial filter is configured to apply the principal component method or orthogonal projections method for generating a raw fetal ECG signal, which is stored in a raw fetal ECG buffer. Fetal QRS identifier identifies peaks in the raw fetal ECG buffer using the principal component method or a peak detector using rule-based QRS-extraction to identify peaks in the raw fetal ECG signal. Merger is used to merge the identified peaks in the fetal ECG signal and the fetal heart rate is calculated from the identified peaks.;EFFECT: extraction of a reliable fetal heart rate and fetal ECG signals.;15 cl, 25 dwg, 1 tbl