This work is an attempt to assess the reliability of indirect abdominal electrocardiography as an alternative technique of fetal monitoring. As a reference signal we used the simultaneously acquired direct fetal electrocardiogram. Each recording consisted of four signals acquired from maternal abdomen and the reference signal acquired directly from fetal head. The first stage of our study conce...

Hypoxic changes in the ST waveform of the fetal electrocardiogram (FECG), with elevated T waves as the main response, have earlier been described in the fetal lamb as mediated via the beta-adrenoceptor cells, initiated by catecholamine release. A similar background to the increase in fetal heart rate variability (FHRV) during hypoxemia has been suggested. The aim of the present study was to elu...

BACKGROUND Fetal well-being evaluation may be accomplished by monitoring cardiac activity through fetal electrocardiography. Direct fetal electrocardiography (acquired through scalp electrodes) is the gold standard but its invasiveness limits its clinical applicability. Instead, clinical use of indirect fetal electrocardiography (acquired through abdominal electrodes) is limited by its poor sig...

This study focuses on non-invasive fetal electrocardiogram extraction based a novel hybrid method, which combines the advantages of non-adaptive and adaptive approaches for morphological analysis. Besides estimating heart rate, is main parameter used in clinical practice, this provides ST segment analysis data from Abdominal Direct Fetal Electrocardiogram Database consisting simultaneous tradit...

The field of electrocardiography has been in existence for over a century, yet despite significant advances in adult clinical electrocardiography, signal processing techniques and fast digital processors, the analysis of fetal ECGs is still in its infancy. This is, partly due to a lack of availability of gold standard databases, partly due to the relatively low signal-to-noise ratio of the feta...

Fetal cardiac MRI is a rapidly evolving form of diagnostic testing with utility as complementary imaging modality for the diagnosis congenital heart disease and assessment fetal cardiovascular system. Previous technical limitations without gating rate has been overcome recent technology. There potential electrocardiography direct gating. In addition to anatomic assessment, innovative technology...

Recording and analysis of fetal heart rate variability is still the most common method for detection of early symptoms of fetal hypoxia. However, fetal heart rate obtained via ultrasound describes only mechanical activity of fetus heart. Limitations of this technique have stimulated the development of fetal electrocardiography. It ensures more precise determination of fetal heart rate and, whic...

Blind source separation (BSS) techniques are widely used to extract signals of interest from a mixture with other signals, such as extracting fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) signals from noninvasive recordings on the maternal abdomen. These BSS techniques, however, typically lack possibilities to incorporate any prior knowledge on the mixing of the source signals. Particularly for fetal ECG signa...