Fetal Heart Rate estimation on non Invasive ECG

Abstract

This paper describes a method for locating QRS complex in noninvasive FECG, using techniques based on MECG cancellation, and Principal Component Analysis. We use a database composed of 15 maternal abdominal electrocardiograms, 4 leads each, sampled at 1000 Hz. The database contains reference annotations that mark the actual locations of each fetal QRS complex. The position of each QRS complex is compared with the estimated position of each actual QRS complex to determine the performance of the proposed method. The proposed method locates the fetal QRS complexes with efficiency above 80% in databases highly contained with noise uterine and fetal movement.