title: Detection of low amplitude fetal QRS complexes.
abstract: The significance of the most important operations performed by the noninvasive systems for fetal heart rate determination is investigated. The method of template subtraction for maternal ECG suppression is compared to the method based on independent component analysis. The QRS detector based on the classical slope-responsive preprocessing competes with the one that employs normalized matched filtering for QRS enhancement. A small database containing the four-channel abdominal ECG signals with the marked positions of the fetal QRS complexes is prepared to enable the investigations. The performed experiments show the factors that have the greatest impact on the results of the fetal QRS detection, and an effective approach to cope the problem is proposed.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electronics, Silesian University of Technology, Akademicka St. 16, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland. mkotas@polsl.pl
authors.forename: Marian
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kotas
authors.forename: Janusz
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jezewski
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kupka
authors.forename: Krzysztof
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Horoba
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D004566:Electrodes; D005260:Female; D005323:Fetal Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D006340:Heart Rate, Fetal; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011247:Pregnancy; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013997:Time Factors