BIOMEDICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING

TERM PAPER PROJECT

NAME : BELAGANTI SAHAJA

ROLL NO. : 19111018
SEMESTER : IV SEM
PROJECT : FECG SIGNAL ANALYSIS
EMAIL ID : [email protected]
BRANCH : BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

INTRODUCTION :
Biomedical signal means a collective electrical signal acquired from any organ that represents a
physical variable of interest where the signal is considered in general a function of time and is
describable in terms of its amplitude, frequency, and phase.Fetal electrocardiogram (FECG)
signal contains potentially precise information that could assist clinicians in making more
appropriate and timely decisions during labor. The ultimate reason for the interest in FECG
signal analysis is in clinical diagnosis and biomedical applications. The extraction and detection
of the FECG signal from composite abdominal signals with powerful and advance
methodologies are becoming very important requirements in fetal monitoring.
Fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring is a routine for obtaining significant information about the
fetal condition during pregnancy and labor. The characteristics of the fetal electrocardiogram
(FECG), such as heart rate, waveform, and dynamic behavior, are convenient in determining the
fetal life, fetal development, fetal maturity, and existence of fetal distress or congenital heart
disease.
Fetal ECG Signal Enhancement :
The human heart generates the quintessential biological signal the heartbeat. A recording of the
cardiac-induced skin potentials at the body’s surface, an electrocardiogram, reveals information
about atrial and ventricular electrical activity. Abnormalities in the temporal durations of the
segments between detections or of the intervals between waves in the ECG, as well as their
relative heights, serve to expose and distinguish cardiac dysfunction. The most commonly used
technique to improve the SNR for repetitive signals, such as the FECG, is averaging . A major
flaw in signal averaging is that it tends to remove short-term changes in the ECG waveform.
Further, a single ECG complex of poor quality may have an undue influence or indeed distort the
resulting ECG average. To avoid this, ECG complexes that satisfy an appropriate quality
criterion are included in the averaging process. However, this may distort the time of occurrence
information and makes it difficult to correlate changes in the ECG waveform to those in the
cardiotocogram (CTG) or other events in labor which is important for a proper assessment of the
fetal condition. The CTG is a technical means of recording the fetal heartbeat and the uterine
contractions during pregnancy. Mainly, these recordings are done by two separate transducers,
one for the measurement of the fetal heart rate and a second one for the uterine contractions. A
typical CTG reading is printed on paper and/or stored on a computer for later reference of
physician. CTG is being used to identify signs of fetal distress. Further, the existence of
significantly large low-frequency noise components, which are correlated, such as baseline
shifts, serve to reduce the effectiveness of averaging. The optimum solution to the problem of
FECG enhancement for feature extraction would require the removal of the baseline shifts as
well as matching the digital filter spectrum to that of the FECG. This way, the distortion of the
features of the ECG is kept to a minimum by the signal processing. Therefore, it is needed to
enhance FECG signal-processing technique to assess the status of the fetus by monitoring the
FHR.

Clinical Importance :
FECG is a biomedical signal that gives electrical representation of FHR to obtain the vital
information about the condition of the fetus during pregnancy and labor from the recordings on
the mother’s body surface. The FECG signal is a comparatively weak signal (less than 20% of
the mother ECG) and often embedded in noise. The FHR lies in the range from 1.3 to 3.5 Hz and
sometimes it is possible for the mother and some of the FECG signals to be closely overlapping.
The FHR monitoring enables accurate measurement of fetal cardiac performance including
transient or permanent abnormalities of rhythm (31). Sometimes, the FECG is the only
information source in early-stage diagnostic of fetal health and status. The FECG is very much
related to the adult ECG, containing the same basic waveforms including the P wave, the QRS
complex, and the T wave. The PQRST complex as shown in Fig. 1 is an electric signal produced
by the contraction of the heart’s muscle called myocardium. It is composed of three parts:
■ The P wave occurs at the beginning of atrial contraction.
■ The QRS complex is associated with the contraction of the ventricles. Due to the magnitude of
the R wave, it is extremely reliable.
■ The T wave corresponds to the repolarization phase, which follows each heart contraction.
The R–R interval leads to the heartbeat frequency that gives useful information for the heart
condition.

Fig. 1. FECG is showing key features: the PQRST complex.

Morphologies of interest include the shape, size, and duration of individual and groups of FECG
waveforms as well as the various ratios relating these quantities to each other. The fetal signal
achieved from the maternal abdomen typically has low amplitude and an unfavorable
signal-to-noise ratio from which the FHR can hardly be detected. The signal-processing
algorithm needs to eliminate the MECG complexes, reduce the effects of motion artifact and
muscle noise, and then enhance the fetal QRS complexes before they can be consistently
detected.
FECG Signal Detection :
It is a well-known fact that an FECG signal is obtained from the AECG of a pregnant woman
that has the potential of being an effective diagnostic tool for determining the overall condition
of the fetus during the delivery, as well as for the detection of pathological phenomena . The fetal
contribution to the AECG is very minor; therefore, it is not uncommon to record a much corrupt
signal from which even the FHR can hardly be monitored. The detection of the FECG is yet a
difficult task even when the maternal component of the signal has been reduced. In order to
observe the FECG, some techniques should be applied for improving the SNR and eliminating
the maternal contribution to the signal . Several methods have been proposed for detecting and
processing the FECG signal from AECG signal. The first requirement for performing an
untriggered averaging of the FECG is to determine the average FHR, later to be used as the
averaging frequency. To detect FHR, two fundamental methods can be considered: a peak
detection method and a transform method. Using the peak detection method, a small segment of
the FECG is observed at a time and searched for the fetal R wave. Mainly, the result of the
search depends on the algorithm used and on the local SNR in the above-mentioned data
segment. Due to the unpredictable nature of the AECG signal, the local SNR value fluctuates
about the SNR value of the entire signal and might sometimes be much smaller. Therefore,
missing some peaks is a common experience while applying peak detection methods to noisy
FECG signals. On the other hand, the use of the transform method, a new function of one or
more parameters, is constructed from the historical signal. Each value of the new function
represents a property of the entire signal. Consequently, each value depends not on the local SNR
but on the SNR of the entire signal. Therefore, when the FECG is obscured by noise with
unwanted signal and the peak detection algorithm fails to detect, a transform method might still
detect the FHR. The regular transform method for identifying the periodicity of a hidden periodic
signal within a time series is the Fourier transform. However, Fourier transform might sometimes
fail to detect the average peDetection and Processing Techniques of FECG Signal for Fetal
Monitoring 273 riodicity in the case of weak signals having small duty cycle. The main reason is
the small correlation between the signal concerned and the analyzing functions (sine and cosine)
of the Fourier transform.
FECG Signal Processing for Extraction and Separation :
The extraction of FECG is very important from a clinical point of view to get reliable
information on fetal status, to detect abnormalities, to enable the adoption of measure for
assuring fetal well-being, to check whether the fetus is alive or dead, and to determine twin
pregnancies. The method of recording the FECG from the mother’s body, without direct contact
with the fetus (which is highly desirable) is called noninvasive method. However, in this method
of recording, the FECG signals have a very low power relative to that of the MECG. The method
of recording FECG signal is far worse during the uterine contractions of the mother. During these
contractions, the AECG recordings will be corrupted by other electrophysiological signals called
uterine electromyogram or electrohysterogram, which are due to the uterine muscle rather than
due to the heart. The response of the fetal heart to the uterine contractions is an important
indicator of the fetal health. However, monitoring the FECG during these contractions is a
complicated task because of very poor SNR. The three main characteristics that need to be
obtained from the FECG extraction for useful diagnosis of the fetal condition include: & FHR &
Amplitude of the different waves & Duration of the waves However, because of the noninvasive
nature of measurement of the FECG, most of the signal-processing algorithms detect only the R
waves and the P and T waves will usually remain hidden. In addition, FECG extraction problem
is not easily solved by conventional filtering techniques. Linear filtering in the Fourier domain
fails since the spectral content of all the three components, MECG, FECG, and noise, are rather
similar and overlap. Some algorithm can be discussed followed by the past research that has been
used in this area of fetal extraction.

Wavelet Transform :
The WT is an efficient mathematical tool for local analysis of nonstationary and fast transient
signals. One of the main properties of WT is that it can be implemented by means of a discrete
time filter bank. The Fourier transforms of the wavelets are referred as WT filters. The WT
represents a very suitable method for the classification of FECG signals from the abdominal
ECG signal.
Wavelet analysis and pattern matching (WA–PM) for the off-line processing of AECG, on which
they assumed that the signal (s(t)) can be mathematically described by the equation
s(t)=r(t)·[f(t)+m(t)+n(t)]. The terms f(t), m(t), and n(t) denote, respectively, fetal, maternal, and
Gaussian noise components, all of them affected by a modulation factor r(t) that causes baseline
wandering. Mainly, this developed procedure involves two stages: the first consists in a
preprocessing stage for the suppression of low- and high-frequency additive noise based on an
optimal wavelet multiresolution decomposition and the second cancels the maternal QRS
complexes by means of pattern matching and template subtraction. The fetal QRS complexes can
be easily identified from the resulting signal by applying a QRS detection algorithm. In order to
eliminate detail signals that do not have maternal and fetal QRS frequency components and to
allow maternal and fetal complex homogenization, the wavelet multiresolution decomposition
was used. Mainly, the homogenization and noise elimination process based on wavelet
multiresolution decomposition assure that the maternal QRS complexes on a real signal present
morphological patterns than can be highly associated with the additive influence of the
embedded fetal QRS complexes, while the pattern-matching procedure has the advantage of
being specific to every record, giving more robustness to the identification process. A recorded
AECG signal has been shown in Fig. 2a. The stage of the method based on the wavelet analysis
which produced the signal shown in Fig. 2b, c contains the signal with the extracted fetal QRS
after the pattern-matching and subtraction stage.A theory saying that wavelet analysis method
can be utilized in the detection of FECG signal from the AECG signal. The wavelet analysis
method is initially applied to detect the appearances of the distorted MECG signal and
consequently MECG component is eliminated from the AECG signal. In fact, in some situation
even after elimination of MECG, FECG is still challenging to be observed because the wavelet
analysis can enhance only FECG under an appropriate
scale factor of wavelet base function; therefore, it can more effectively and correctly detect
FECG signal. The wavelet analysis approach can detect singularity of signal either in the
frequency domain or in the time domain.
Fig. 2. a Abdominal ECG; b signal after the wavelet analysis stage; c extracted fetal QRS.
Signal Method Advantage/disadvantage

Detection Fourier transform When the FECG is obscured by noise and the
peak detection algorithm fails, a transform
method might still detect the FHR proficiently
SNR is averagely high
In the case of weak signals having small duty
cycle, this tool might sometimes fail to detect the
average periodicity because of small correlation
Least mean square between the signals Feasible for fetal heart tone
signature identification and analysis in the
presence of background acoustic noise.

Complex continuous
wavelet transform (CCWT) Performs well and the accuracy of the method
is high Algorithm’s parameters increase the
system’s efficacy Computationally fast and
excels in performance Able to extract the
MHR signal, which can be useful for parallel
monitoring of the mother’s health.
Extraction Wavelet transform (WT) Coherent average can get more accurate
reference Can be obtained to smooth the
baseline drift Requires only one abdominal
signal for fetal QRS extraction and maternal
QRS cancellation More flexible and effective
tool for FHR signals denoising than the
traditional filtering techniques
Time–frequency analysis Three leads are used for FECG extraction
Spectrum produced by Wigner-Ville
distribution (WVD) distribution displays very
good localization properties The main
 drawback of the method is the difficulty to
extract the fetal R peaks in noisy background or
in cases where the FECG is not distinguishable
Artificial neural Very fast and does not involve human efforts
networks(ANN) for categorization Neural networks can offer
the computational power of non-linear
techniques Sometimes it does not estimate the
exact baseline value and its precision is limited
by the number of classes
ICA and BSS Relatively, SNR is high Efficient both in batch
and on-line operation modes Fast and efficient
approach for the preprocessing of multiple

of interest No specific prior knowledge

required in order to identify components
generated from different sources Often
require a large number of recorded leads to
reach reliable FECG extraction.

CONCLUSION :
Detailed analysis of the FECG during labor could provide valuable additional information about
the health conditions of the fetus as well as to assist clinicians in reducing incidents of
unnecessary medical intervention. As a result, long-term FHR monitoring is important during the
pregnancy and labor. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to provide concise information about
FECG and reveal the different methodologies to analyze the signal for efficient FHR monitoring.
Techniques for FECG signal detection and extraction from the composite AECG signal were
discussed along with their advantages and drawbacks. Finding of a difficulty or problem in one
method leads to other improved methods. This revision clearly points up the various types of
FECG signal analysis techniques so that accurate methods can be applied during any medical
diagnosis, biomedical research, hardware implementations, and end user applications.