Design and Realization of Non Invasive Fetal ECG Monitoring System

Early fetal cardiac diseases and heart abnormalities can be detected and appropriately treated by monitoring fetal health during pregnancy. Advancements in computer sciences and the technology of sensors show that is possible to monitor fetal electrocardiogram (fECG). Both signal processing and experimental aspects are needed to be investigated to monitor fECG. In this study, we aim to design and realize a non invasive fECG monitoring system. In the first part of this work, a remote study process of the electrical activity of the heart is achieved. In fact, our proposed design considers transmitting the detected signals in real time using a WiFi module and then analyzing the results on Raspberry Pi 3. As the signal acquired from the mother's abdomen is contaminated by several noises, in the second part, we propose a method to extract the fetal electrocardiogram FECG by using Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Wavelet Transform (WT). The proposed method was tested on real data recordings from the publicly available Physionet database. In this paper, we proposed an efficient hardware design to well monitor the heart activity. Then, we presented our adopted method for fECG extraction. The obtained results with the mentioned method show the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm and it is suggested to be used in the portable designed fECG monitoring system.

Automated summary

Early detection and treatment of fetal cardiac diseases and heart abnormalities is crucial during pregnancy. This study proposes a non-invasive fECG monitoring system using WiFi transmission and Raspberry Pi 3 for real-time analysis of extracted fetal electrocardiogram signals. The method of Independent Component Analysis and Wavelet Transform is used for noise reduction and signal extraction. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and suggest its use in portable fECG monitoring systems.