Single-lead fetal ECG extraction based on a parallel marginalized particle filter

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method for extracting the fetal ECG (FECG) from a single-lead abdominal signal. A dynamical model for a modified abdominal signal is proposed, in which both the maternal ECG (MECG) and the FECG are modeled, and then a parallel marginalized particle filter (par-MPF) is used for tracking the abdominal signal. Finally, the FECG and MECG are simultaneously separated. Several experiments are conducted using both simulated and clinical signals. The results indicate that the method proposed in this paper effectively extracts the FECG and outperforms other Bayesian filtering algorithms.