Quantification of the fetal electrocardiogram using averaging technique

A signal analysis procedure is described for obtaining time intervals parameters of the fetal electrocardiogram as recorded from the maternal abdomen. Applying averaging to the fetal electrocardiogram quantification of the PR interval, QRS duration and QT interval were measured. This technique which includes the subtraction of an averaged maternal ECG waveform using cross-correlation function and fast Fourier transform algorithm, enables the detection of all the fetal QRS complexes in spite of their coincidence with the maternal ECGs. Results that were obtained from 21 pregnant women at the gestational age of 32-41 weeks and an example of a recording with fetal premature ventricular contractions are presented. This method shows an important improvement with respect to detection of fetal heart rate and detection of arrhythmia disturbances in the fetal ECG. The averaging procedure can be used to evaluate long-lived alterations in the fetal ECG.     

Real-time abdominal fetal ECG recording using a hardware correlator.

A real-time fetal ECG monitoring system using abdominal recording is presented. The system is based on an IBM AT compatible personal computer. The computer lacks the performance required for real-time analysis. Therefore, a new design of a fast hardware correlator board was developed to enhance the computer throughput. The technique is based on a cross-correlation procedure. An averaged maternal ECG waveform is derived using the cross-correlation function for the waveform's alignment. With this procedure a template signal corresponding to one complete maternal ECG is obtained. The averaged maternal ECG is then subtracted from the abdominal signals. Thus, it is possible to detect all the fetal ORS complexes in spite of their coincidence with the maternal ECG. An average fetal ECG is then extracted to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, making it possible to recognize fetal P and T waves.     

Spectral analysis of the fetal electrocardiogram

The spectral curves of the averaged fetal and maternal electrocardiograms as recorded from the abdomen were studied. The power spectrums were obtained using a technique which includes the subtraction of an averaged maternal ECG waveform using cross-correlation function and fast Fourier transform algorithm. The spectral curves of the averaged maternal and fetal ECG waveforms obtained from 21 pregnant women who had gestation periods of 32–41 weeks were studied. It was found that the poor signal to noise ratio, the high rate of coincidence between maternal and fetal ECGs and the similar frequency spectra of the signal and the noise components make an analysis of the abdominal ECG using conventional filtering technique rarely possible and an alternative method should be used.     

The influence of coincidence of fetal and maternal QRS complexes on fetal heart rate reliability

Bioelectrical fetal heart activity being recorded from maternal abdominal surface contains more information than mechanical heart activity measurement based on the Doppler ultrasound signals. However, it requires extraction of fetal electrocardiogram from abdominal signals where the maternal electrocardiogram is dominant. The simplest technique for maternal component suppression is a blanking procedure, which relies upon the replacement of maternal QRS complexes by isoline values. Although, in case of coincidence of fetal and maternal QRS complexes, it causes a loss of information on fetal heart activity. Its influence on determination of fetal heart rate and the variability analysis depends on the sensitivity of the heart-beat detector used. The sensitivity is defined as an ability to detect the incomplete fetal QRS complex. The aim of this work was to evaluate the influence of the maternal electrocardiogram suppression method used on the reliability of FHR signal being calculated.     

Enhancement of low-quality fetal electrocardiogram based on time-sequenced adaptive filtering

Extraction of a clean fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) from non-invasive abdominal recordings is one of the biggest challenges in fetal monitoring. An ECG allows for the interpretation of the electrical heart activity beyond the heart rate and heart rate variability. However, the low signal quality of the fetal ECG hinders the morphological analysis of its waveform in clinical practice. The time-sequenced adaptive filter has been proposed for performing optimal time-varying filtering of non-stationary signals having a recurring statistical character. In our study, the time-sequenced adaptive filter is applied to enhance the quality of multichannel fetal ECG after the maternal ECG is removed. To improve the performance of the filter in cases of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), we enhance the ECG reference signals by averaging consecutive ECG complexes. The performance of the proposed augmented time-sequenced adaptive filter is evaluated in both synthetic and real data from PhysioNet. This evaluation shows that the suggested algorithm clearly outperforms other ECG enhancement methods, in terms of uncovering the ECG waveform, even in cases with very low SNR. With the presented method, quality of the fetal ECG morphology can be enhanced to the extent that the ECG might be fit for use in clinical diagnostics.

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Graphical abstract The extracted fetal ECG signals from non-invasive abdominal recordings still contain a substantial amount of noise. The time-sequenced adaptive filter provides a relatively accurate estimate of the underlying fetal ECG signal when the quality of the reference channels is enhanced prior to filtering.

     

Detection of QRS complexes in electrocardiogram using support vector machine

This paper presents the application of a support vector machine (SVM) for the detection of QRS complexes in the electrocardiogram (ECG). The ECG signal is filtered using digital filtering techniques to remove noise and baseline wander. The support vector machine is used as a classifier to delineate QRS and non-QRS regions. Two different algorithms are presented for the detection of QRS complexes. The first uses a single-lead ECG at a time for the detection of QRS complexes, while the second uses 12-lead simultaneously recorded ECG. Both algorithms have been tested on the standard CSE ECG database. A detection rate of 99.3% is achieved when tested using a single-lead ECG. This improves to 99.75% for the simultaneously recorded 12-lead ECG signal. The percentage of false negative detection is 0.7% and the percentage of false positive detection is 12.4% in the single-lead QRS detection and it reduces to 0.26% and 1.61% respectively for QRS detection in simultaneously recorded 12-lead ECG signals. The performance of the algorithms depends strongly on the selection and the variety of the ECGs included in the training set, data representation and the mathematical basis of the classifier.     

Detection of QRS complexes in electrocardiogram using support vector machine

This paper presents the application of a support vector machine (SVM) for the detection of QRS complexes in the electrocardiogram (ECG). The ECG signal is filtered using digital filtering techniques to remove noise and baseline wander. The support vector machine is used as a classifier to delineate QRS and non-QRS regions. Two different algorithms are presented for the detection of QRS complexes. The first uses a single-lead ECG at a time for the detection of QRS complexes, while the second uses 12-lead simultaneously recorded ECG. Both algorithms have been tested on the standard CSE ECG database. A detection rate of 99.3% is achieved when tested using a single-lead ECG. This improves to 99.75% for the simultaneously recorded 12-lead ECG signal. The percentage of false negative detection is 0.7% and the percentage of false positive detection is 12.4% in the single-lead QRS detection and it reduces to 0.26% and 1.61% respectively for QRS detection in simultaneously recorded 12-lead ECG signals. The performance of the algorithms depends strongly on the selection and the variety of the ECGs included in the training set, data representation and the mathematical basis of the classifier.     

基于自适应线性神经网络的胎儿心电信号提取

胎儿心电信号提取对胎儿监护具有重要意义。本文介绍了一种基于自适应线性神经网络的胎儿心电信号提取方法。该方法根据母体心电信号与母体腹部信号的相关性原理,以母体心电信号为网络输入,母体腹部信号为网络目标,采用W-H学习方法获取的训练误差即为提取出的胎儿心电信号。此外,通过增加网络隐含层,对神经网络的结构进行改进,增加网络训练精度,从而得到更好的训练结果,提取出更易识别的胎儿心电信号。最后分别使用仿真数据和临床数据对上述方法进行测试,实验结果表明,利用自适应线性神经网络可以提取出胎儿心电信号,通过改进神经网络结构,可以提取出更为清晰的胎儿心电信号。     

一种基于单通道腹部信号的胎儿心电提取算法

设计一种基于单通道孕腹部信号的胎儿心电提取算法,分别提取出母亲心电和胎儿心电,并计算出母亲心率和胎儿心率。首先对单通道孕腹部信号进行k-TEO(k=19)变换,突出母亲心电的QRS波,从而通过简单的阈值法确定母亲心电的R波位置,接着通过在相邻R波间重采样以获得相同的R-R间期T,这样经过一个间隔为T的梳状滤波器就可以分离出相同R-R间期的母亲心电,然后再一次在相邻R波间进行重采样恢复原来的R-R间期就可以获得实际的母亲心电了。原始腹部信号减去上面提取的母亲心电后,胎儿心电QRS波的信噪比大大提高,通过再次应用提取母亲心电的算法即可得到“干净”的胎儿心电波形。选取Physionet数据库中的8 组(26 通道)孕腹部信号数据进行分析,计算每个通道数据的胎儿心电QRS波位置识别灵敏度、阳性检测率和准确性。结果表明,胎儿心电QRS波的识别准确率达到87.1%,其中有6 个通道达到100%。另外计算每个通道的母亲心率和胎儿心率并做统计分析,发现每一组中各个通道的母亲平均心率和胎儿平均心率都非常接近,同一组中各通道间母亲平均心率最大误差为0.1次/min, 而胎儿平均心率最大误差也只有0.9次/min,进一步证明算法的可靠性。     

基于扩展卡尔曼滤波和奇异值分解算法的单通道胎儿心电提取方法

提出一种将扩展卡尔曼滤波(EKF)算法和奇异值分解(SVD)算法相结合的单通道胎儿心电提取方法。首先,建立母体心电的动态模型,利用该模型通过扩展卡尔曼滤波或扩展卡尔曼平滑(EKS),从孕妇的单通道腹部信号中估计出母体心电成分,然后与单通道腹部信号相减得到胎儿心电信号的初步估计,随后再利用奇异值分解算法,对初步估计出的胎儿心电信号进行去噪处理,以期得到高信噪比的胎儿心电信号。另外,针对胎儿心律不齐的情况,在奇异值分解算法中提出一种改进的心电信号重构矩阵构造方法。对合成腹部信号和实际腹部信号(源于DaISy数据库和PhysioNet中的非侵入式胎儿心电数据库,共计49个腹部通道的数据),进行胎儿心电提取实验。结果表明,使用EKF+SVD或EKS+SVD的算法比单独使用EKF或EKS的算法,提取出的胎儿心电信号的信噪比提高约5 dB,胎儿心电提取的准确性分别达95.60%和95.94%。结合EKF和SVD算法的单通道胎儿心电提取方法,可以有效地提高胎儿心电信号的信噪比和提取的准确性,并且适用于母体或胎儿心律不齐的情况。     

Research of fetal ECG extraction using wavelet analysis and adaptive filtering

Extracting clean fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) signals is very important in fetal monitoring. In this paper, we proposed a new method for fetal ECG extraction based on wavelet analysis, the least mean square (LMS) adaptive filtering algorithm, and the spatially selective noise filtration (SSNF) algorithm. First, abdominal signals and thoracic signals were processed by stationary wavelet transform (SWT), and the wavelet coefficients at each scale were obtained. For each scale, the detail coefficients were processed by the LMS algorithm. The coefficient of the abdominal signal was taken as the original input of the LMS adaptive filtering system, and the coefficient of the thoracic signal as the reference input. Then, correlations of the processed wavelet coefficients were computed. The threshold was set and noise components were removed with the SSNF algorithm. Finally, the processed wavelet coefficients were reconstructed by inverse SWT to obtain fetal ECG. Twenty cases of simulated data and 12 cases of clinical data were used. Experimental results showed that the proposed method outperforms the LMS algorithm: (1) it shows improvement in case of superposition R-peaks of fetal ECG and maternal ECG; (2) noise disturbance is eliminated by incorporating the SSNF algorithm and the extracted waveform is more stable; and (3) the performance is proven quantitatively by SNR calculation. The results indicated that the proposed algorithm can be used for extracting fetal ECG from abdominal signals.     

Computerized detection of low-level fetal signals in the maternal abdominal electrocardiogram

This paper describes a method for detecting low-level fetal ECG signals in maternal abdominal ECG recordings. Detection is based on a systematic application of the principle that the fetal ECG contains proportionately greater high-frequency components than does the maternal ECG. Adaptive subtraction of the maternal high-frequency components is used to detect the fetal R-waves. The method is found to detect the fetal ECG even in many cases where the maternal and fetal R-waves coincide or occur in close proximity to each other. Recursive time-coherent averaging is then used to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the fetal ECG to the point where the fetal P and T waves may be observed.     

Online Digital Filter and QRS Detector Applicable in Low Resource ECG Monitoring Systems

The present work describes fast computation methods for real-time digital filtration and QRS detection, both applicable in autonomous personal ECG systems for long-term monitoring. Since such devices work under considerable artifacts of intensive body and electrode movements, the input filtering should provide high-quality ECG signals supporting the accurate ECG interpretation. In this respect, we propose a combined high-pass and power-line interference rejection filter, introducing the simple principle of averaging of samples with a predefined distance between them. In our implementation (sampling frequency of 250 Hz), we applied averaging over 17 samples distanced by 10 samples (Filter10x17), thus realizing a comb filter with a zero at 50 Hz and high-pass cut-off at 1.1 Hz. Filter10x17 affords very fast filtering procedure at the price of minimal computing resources. Another benefit concerns the small ECG distortions introduced by the filter, providing its powerful application in the preprocessing module of diagnostic systems analyzing the ECG morphology. Filter10x17 does not attenuate the QRS amplitude, or introduce significant ST-segment elevation/depression. The filter output produces a constant error, leading to uniform shifting of the entire P-QRS-T segment toward about 5% of the R-peak amplitude. Tests with standardized ECG signals proved that Filter10x17 is capable to remove very strong baseline wanderings, and to fully suppress 50 Hz interferences. By changing the number of the averaged samples and the distance between them, a filter design with different cut-off and zero frequency could be easily achieved. The real-time QRS detector is designed with simplified computations over single channel, low-resolution ECGs. It relies on simple evaluations of amplitudes and slopes, including history of their mean values estimated over the preceding beats, smart adjustable thresholds, as well as linear logical rules for identification of the R-peaks in real-time. The performance of the QRS detector was tested with internationally recognized ECG databases (AHA, MIT-BIH, European ST-T database), showing mean sensitivity of 99.65% and positive predictive value of 99.57%. The performance of the presented QRS detector can be highly rated, comparable and even better than other published real-time QRS detectors. Examples representing some typical unfavorable conditions in real ECGs, illustrate the common operation of Filter10x17 and the QRS detector.     

心律不齐患者心电图变异的小波分析

为探究心电图(ECG)中QRS波群能量占比,提出了对ECG进行小波变换,计算多尺度下QRS波群能量占比的新方法。以年轻(21～34岁)与年老(68～81岁)两组健康人及一组心律不齐患者(68～81岁)30个个体的ECG为实验数据,用Mexican-Hat为母小波在多个小波变换尺度下对ECG中的QRS波群进行能量占比的计算。结果表明,QRS波群的能量占比随年龄的增加无变化(P>0.44),但在相同年龄组,QRS波群能量占比在17Hz附近心律不齐患者组明显小于健康组(P<0.01),从而确定利用小波分析法计算出的QRS波能量占比可以作为检测窦性心律不齐患者的一项特征指标。     

多导同步心电图的QRS波检测及起止点的确定

本文采用从单导到多导的检测方法,首先利用小波变换实现单导ＱＲＳ波的检测,在此基础上,利用位置相关法进行多导ＱＲＳ波的检测,并利用心电信号的２＾１迟度小波变换的平方值来确定ＱＲＳ波的起止点,经过大量数据的检测证明取得了很好的效果。     

Combined entropy based method for detection of QRS complexes in 12-lead electrocardiogram using SVM

A method based on signal entropy is proposed for the detection of QRS complexes in the 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) using support vector machine (SVM). Digital filtering techniques are used to remove power line interference and base line wander in the ECG signal. Combined Entropy criterion was used to enhance the QRS complexes. SVM is used as a classifier to delineate QRS and non-QRS regions. The performance of the proposed algorithm was tested using 12-lead real ECG recordings from the standard CSE ECG database. The numerical results indicated that the algorithm achieved 99.93% of detection rate. The percentage of false positive and false negative is 0.54% and 0.06%, respectively. The proposed algorithm performs better as compared with published results of other QRS detectors tested on the same database.     

Fetal heart rate monitoring based on independent component analysis

In this paper, an algorithm based on independent component analysis (ICA) for extracting the fetal heart rate (FHR) from maternal abdominal electrodes is presented. Three abdominal ECG channels are used to extract the FHR in three steps: first preprocessing procedures such as DC cancellation and low-pass filtering are applied to remove noise. Then the algorithm for multiple unknown source extraction (AMUSE) algorithm is fed to extract the sources from the observation signals include fetal ECG (FECG). Finally, FHR is extracted from FECG. The method is shown to be capable of completely revealing FECG R-peaks from observation leads even with a SNR=-200dB using semi-synthetic data.     

New approach to studies on ECG dynamics: Extraction and analyses of QRS complex irregularity time series

How to extract information intensively from ECGs for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases and assessment of heart function is a topical subject. Using a method based on the wavelet transform to calculate the irregularity of the QRS complex, which may relate to inotropy, the QRS complex irregularity time series is successfully extracted from original ECG signals. This provides a new approach to studies of ECG dynamics. With the help of non-linear dynamics theory, the QRS complex irregularity time series of eight subjects, from the MIT/BIH arrhythmia database are studied qualitatively and quantitatively, and the characteristics of ECG dynamics are analysed extensively. The power spectrum, phase portrait, correlation dimension, largest Lyapunov exponent, time-dependent divergence exponent and complexity measure all verify the fact that ECG dynamics are dominated by an underiying 5–6-dimensional non-linear chaotic system, whose complexity measure is about 0.7. The QRS complex irregularity time series contains abundant information about all parts of the heart and the regulation of the autonomic nervous system, and so further analyses are of great potential theoretical and clinical significance to patho-physiology studies and ambulatory monitoring.     

基于独立成分和小波分析的胎儿心电提取

背景：在胎儿心电信号的采集过程中,会受到母体和其他噪声的强干扰,如何快捷与有效地提取出胎儿心电将成为重要的研究课题。 目的：采用结合独立成分分析和小波分析的方法对来自于同一母体的观测信号进行独立分量分离,得到有效的胎儿心电。 方法：结合独立成分分析和小波分析的算法进行胎儿心电的特征提取,首先对含噪信号进行小波变换,去除奇异信号和非平稳随机信号,然后对小波重构后的信号运用快速独立成分分析算法进行成分分析。 结果与结论：在胎儿心电信号的采集过程中,会受到母体和其他噪声的强干扰,但这些信号都是随机的,不相关的,可以认为它们间是相互独立的。采用结合独立成分和小波分析的方法对来自于同一母体的观测信号进行独立分量分离,得到有效的胎儿心电。实验证明该方法是一种有效的方法。     

R wave detection using fractional digital differentiation

In this paper, a fractional digital differentiation-based algorithm for detecting R wave in QRS complex of electrocardiogram (ECG) is developed. A FIR bandpass filter, whose coefficients only depend on fractional orders, reduces various noises present in ECG signals and generates peaks corresponding to the ECG parts with high slopes. This filter is followed by nonlinear transforms and smoothing to enhance peaks corresponding to R waves. Algorithm tests on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Beth Israel Hospital (MIT/BIH) ECG database illustrate the capability of this novel approach to recognizing QRS complexes in very noisy ECG signals. The algorithm’s performances are comparable to those of the most efficient QRS detectors tested on this database.