基于DSP的自适应胎儿心电图仪研究

介绍了一种自适应胎儿心电图仪的研究与实现方法.研制了TMS320LF2407A数字信号处理芯片为核心的嵌入式系统.根据自适应噪声抵消(Adaptive noise cancelling,ANC)原理,研究与实现了自适应噪声抵消软件算法,无创无损提取胎儿心电信号,并通过通讯接口送至上位机实时显示,分析和记录处理结果.实验表明该仪器设计合理,性能良好.     

Evoked potential estimation using modified time-sequenced adaptive filter

A method called modified time-sequenced adaptive filtering (MTSAF) is applied to estimate evoked potential (EP) signals and track the temporal variations of EPs. The MTSAF consists of a set of adaptive filters (AFs), with each processing a time segment of EP data. After convergence, each AF reaches the best estimation of EP signals over its own time segment in terms of minimum mean squared error (MMSE). Numerical results of simulated and human EP data show that the MTSAF reaches better estimation of EPs than a conventional adaptive signal enhancer (ASE). With the MTSAF, the temporal variations of EPS across trials can be estimated to reveal more subtle variations of EPs, which may be of clinical value.     

An application of reconfigurable technologies for non-invasive fetal heart rate extraction

This paper illustrates the use of a reconfigurable system for fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) estimation from mother's abdomen ECG measurements. The system is based on two different reconfigurable devices. Initially, a field-programmable analog array (FPAA) device implements the analog reconfigurable preprocessing for ECG signal acquisition. The signal processing chain continues onto a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device, which contains all the communication and interfacing protocols along with specific digital signal processing blocks required for fundamental period extraction from FECG waveforms. The synergy between these devices provides the system the ability to change any necessary parameter during the acquisition process for enhancing the result. The use of a FPGA allows implementing different algorithms for FECG signal extraction, such as adaptive signal filtering. Preliminary works employ commercially available development platforms for test experiments, which suffice for the processing of real FECG signals from biomedical databases, as the presented results illustrate.     

基于RLS-ANC自适应滤波的FECG信号提取方法

本文应用RLS-ANC(recursive least squares adaptive noise canceⅡation)自适应滤波方法提取胎儿心电(FECG)信号.该方法采用RLS-ANC自适应滤波消除母亲心电,提取胎儿心电信号.实验结果表明,本方法适应非平稳信号的能力强,收敛速度快,提取效果好于NLMS(normalized least mean squares)算法.     

Compact long-term recorder for the transabdominal foetal and maternal electrocardiogram

Foetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring is a proven means of assessing foetal health during the antenatal period. Currently, the only widely available instrumentation for producing these data is based on Doppler ultrasound, a technology that is unsuitable for long-term use. For nearly a century, it has been known that the foetal electrocardiogram (FECG) can be detected using electrodes placed on the maternal abdomen. Although these signals suggest an alternative means of FHR derivation, their use has been limited owing to problems of poor signal-to-noise ratio. However, the eminent suitability of the transabdominal FECG for long-term FHR monitoring has suggested that perseverance with the technique would be worthwhile. The paper describes the design, construction and use of a compact, long-term recorder of three channels of 24 h antenatal transabdominal data. Preliminary use of the recorder in around 400 short recording sessions demonstrates that FHR records of equivalent quality to those from Doppler ultrasound-based instruments can be extracted from such data. The success of FHR derivation is, on average, around 65% of the recording period from around 20 weeks gestation (although this figure is reduced from around 28–32 weeks, and the success rates exhibit a wide range when individual subjects are considered). These results demonstrate that the technique offers, not only a means of acquiring long-term FHR data that are problematic to obtain by other means, but also a more patient-friendly alternative to the Doppler ultrasound technique.     

Comparison of SVD methods to extract the foetal electrocardiogram from cutaneous electrode signals

The paper presents and compares three methods making use of the singular value decomposition (SVD) of a matrix to extract the foetal electrocardiogram (FECG) from cutaneously recorded electrode signals. The first method constructs a set of orthogonal foetal signals (the so-called principal foetal signals) from the recordings, but needs electrode positions far from the foetal heart, in addition to the abdominal electrodes that pick up a mixture of maternal and foetal electrocardiogram. An online adaptive algorithm has been developed such that a real-time implementation becomes feasible. The second method is a new online approach to a technique presented by van Oosterom. Although this method has some important drawbacks and is suboptimal as far as foetal signal-to-noise ratio is concerned. it is still very useful when only a foetal trigger is required, as the signal obtained is not a complete FECG, Finally, a third method is proposed, based on the generalised SVD and interpreted with the new concept of oriented signal-to-signal ratio. An online version is also presented for this method and some results are shown.     

Detection of fetal electrocardiogram signals using matched filters with adaptive normalisation

The authors discuss the application of matched filters to the detection of R-waves in fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) data, recorded during labour using a scalp electrode. When using the basic matched filter, one correlates a template representing the clean signal with the noisy signal. This method is optimal when the underlying noise is white in nature. However, it is known that false detection of R-waves can occur in the presence of extraneous peaks which have a similar shape to the fetal R-wave. It is proposed to switch between two different normalisations of the impulse response of the matched filter to alleviate this problem. When the signal-to-noise ratio is lower than a predetermined threshold, then normalisation to the geometric mean of the template and noisy data energies is carried out, otherwise only normalisation to the template energy is made. In the former case, the background noise and spikes that are larger than the underlying FECG are attenuated, hence increasing the probability of detection of the R-waves. In the latter case, noise which has a lower amplitude than the underlying R-wave, is reduced. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated by application to scalp electrode data.     

Comparison of adaptive filtering in time-, transform- and frequency-domain: An electrogastrographic study

Adaptive cancellation of motion artifacts in the electrogastrogram (EGG) is presented in this paper. The EGG is a surface measurement of gastric electrical activity. Like other noninvasive electrophysiological measurements, the EGG contains motion artifacts. A number of papers have been published on the adaptive cancellation of motion artifacts or interferences in biomedical signals. Adaptive filtering was performed in time domain in almost all of the previous publications. In this paper, however, three different sorts of adaptive filters were investigated and their efficiencies in cancellation of motion artifacts were compared with each other. These include time-domain, transform-domain, and frequency-domain adaptive filters. A series of simulations were conducted to investigate the performance of these adaptive filters in cancellation of respiratory and motion artifacts. The results show that the frequency-domain adaptive filter has superior performance over the time- and transform-domain adaptive filters in the cancellation of stationary respiratory artifacts in the EGG. Although results focus on the EGG, this paper provides useful information for adaptive filtering of other biomedical signals.     

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.

     

两导心电信号独立分量分析算法的研究

根据独立分量分析(ICA)理论,要想在观测信号中提取出独立分量,观测信号的数目必须大于或等于独立分量的数目,因此要求采用ICA算法的胎儿心电图机导联数必须大于一定数目,但在实际应用中常常难以满足这个条件。故本文提出了一种基于少数导联心电(ECG)信号的胎儿心电(FECG)提取算法,结合FECG和自适应噪声抵消算法,从两导采集于孕妇腹部体表的ECG信号中提取FECG。实验表明,该方法能够获得清晰的FECG信号。     

基于经验模态分解自适应滤波的胎儿心电信号提取

目的提出了一种基于经验模态分解自适应滤波的胎儿心电信号提取法。方法首先利用经验模态分解算法对孕妇腹部信号进行分解得到一组内模函数(IMF),然后将这组IMF作为自适应滤波器的主输入信号,并将孕妇胸部信号作为参考输入信号。通过学习算法自适应组合IMF,滤除母体心电信号成分,从而提取胎儿心电信号。结果与结论基于仿真和临床的实验结果表明,该方法提取的胎儿心电信号误差小,性能优于传统的最小均方和归一化最小均方自适应滤波算法。     

ECG-changes in the fetal lamb during asphyxia in relation to beta-adrenoceptor stimulation and blockade.

Progressive changes in the S-T interval of the fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) were studied in 14 lamb fetuses, acutely exteriorized and subjected to graded hypoxia. The aims of the study were to investigate whether beta-adrenoceptor stimulation and hypoxia exerted additive or potentiating effects on the FECG and several cardiovascular parameters and whether the hypoxic changes of the FECG could be blocked by beta-adrenoceptor blocking agents. The FECG changes were studied in order to correlate them with cardiovascular function, as measured by heart rate, mean arterial pressure, end diastolic pressure, maximum dP/dt and combined cardiac output, estimated by the thermodilution method, as well as with blood gases, acid base status, blood lactate and glucose. Injections of small doses (0.02 to 0.4 microg kg-1 min-1) of isoprenaline induced the same pattern of changes in the FECG as we have previously recorded during hypoxia. By increasing the isoprenaline dose an increase in the duration of the FECG changes and amplitude of the T-wave changes was obtained. Propranolol was found to completely abolish the FECG changes induced by isoprenaline, as well as by mild hypoxia. During severe hypoxia the FECG changes could not be abolished by propranolol. Our previous findings indicated that the hypoxic changes could be regarded as a sign of myocardial glycolysis. Thus, the present finding that even small doses of isoprenaline given to the fetus, initiates the same pattern of FECG changes corroborate this hypothesis.     

Ultra-low-noise instrumentation and computer-based data acquisition and processing system for obtaining a noninvasive and intrauterine catheter fetal electrocardiogram

A fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) from the abdominal surface will be from 20 microVpp to unmeasurable. The intrauterine catheter signal will be from 50 microVpp to unmeasureable and will be corrupted with a significant direct current component of 10 to 200 microV. For electrophysiological information to be obtained from the abdominal and intrauterine catheter signals, the signals must be in a 0.05 to 100.0 Hz bandwidth. Because typical adult electrocardiogram systems have a noise specification of 5 to 10 microVpp from instrumentation, these systems are unacceptable for obtaining a FECG via the intrauterine catheter or noninvasively. Therefore, custom instrumentation has been developed with a noise specification of approximately 1.5 microVpp in a 0.05 to 100.0 Hz bandwidth. Design details of the custom instrumentation will be presented along with a laptop computer based data acquisition and signal processing system using LabVIEW. In addition, clinical data from the intrauterine catheter and noninvasive abdominal wall are presented to determine the feasibility of obtaining a FECG via the custom instrumentation. Clinical data obtained and documented indicates that after maternal electrocardiogram cancellation, a FECG with a good signal-to-noise ratio can be obtained in a diagnostic bandwidth of 0.05 to 100.0 Hz. Because the diagnostic bandwidth is preserved, electrophysiological information can be determined along with heart rate.     

The fetal electrocardiogram by independent component analysis and wavelets

Once the fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) waveforms from ECG on the maternal abdomen are detected, the fetal P wave and T wave cannot always be identified by using continuous wavelet transform (CWT). We took noninvasive FECG from the maternal abdomen, extracted it from the maternal electrocardiogram waveforms after an Independent Component Analysis (ICA), and identified the features of those waveforms by using CWT. We also simultaneously analyzed the observed signals by Primary Component Analysis (PCA). FECG has been extracted by ICA from 25 of 30 pregnant women. The fetal P wave and T wave could be identified in 21 of the 25 cases. FECG was extracted by PCA in only one case. ICA is superior to PCA, whose separation quality highly depends on the careful positioning of the electrodes. We believe that after ICA, FECG obtained by the wavelet theory based method will become a powerful tool for the differential diagnosis of fetal arrhythmias.     

基于快速定点独立分量分析算法的母胎心电信号分离

研究快速定点独立分量分析方法在母胎心电信号分离中的应用。采用此算法,在胎儿心电信号与母体心电信号可以视为相互独立的信号源的前提下,对来源于同一孕妇的观测信号进行独立分量分离。快速定点独立分量算法可以有效地分离出单个独立分量,得到的胎儿心电信号(FECG)较理想。采用独立分量分析方法,实现母胎心电信号分离,是一种值得尝试的信号处理方法。     

ECG-changes in the fetal Iamb during asphyxia in relation to beta-adrenoceptor stimulation and blockade

Progressive changes in the S-T interval of the fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) were studied in 14 lamb fetuses, acutely exteriorized and subjected to graded hypoxia. The aims of the study were to investigate whether beta-adrenoceptor stimulation and hypoxia exerted additive or potentiating effects on the FECG and several cardiovascular parameters and whether the hypoxic changes of the FECG could be blocked by beta-adrenoceptor blocking agents. The FECG changes were studied in order to correlate them with cardiovascular function, as measured by heart rate, mean arterial pressure, end diastolic pressure, maximum dP/dt and combined cardiac output, estimated by the thermodilution method, as well as with blood gases, acid base status, blood lactate and glucose. Injections of small doses (0.02 to 0.4 μg kg^-1 min^-1) of isoprenaline induced the same pattern of changes in the FECG as we have previously recorded during hypoxia. By increasing the isoprenaline dose an increase in the duration of the FECG changes and amplitude of the T-wave changes was obtained. Propranolol was found to completely abolish the FECG changes induced by isoprenaline, as well as by mild hypoxia. During severe hypoxia the FECG changes could not be abolished by propranolol. Our previous findings indicated that the hypoxic changes could be regarded as a sign of myocardial glycolysis. Thus, the present finding that even small doses of isoprenaline given to the fetus, initiates the same pattern of FECG changes corroborate this hypothesis.     

On using an adaptive neural network to predict lung tumor motion during respiration for radiotherapy applications

In this study we address the problem of predicting the position of a moving lung tumor during respiration on the basis of external breathing signals--a technique used for beam gating, tracking, and other dynamic motion management techniques in radiation therapy. We demonstrate the use of neural network filters to correlate tumor position with external surrogate markers while simultaneously predicting the motion ahead in time, for situations in which neither the breathing pattern nor the correlation between moving anatomical elements is constant in time. One pancreatic cancer patient and two lung cancer patients with mid/upper lobe tumors were fluoroscopically imaged to observe tumor motion synchronously with the movement of external chest markers during free breathing. The external marker position was provided as input to a feed-forward neural network that correlated the marker and tumor movement to predict the tumor position up to 800 ms in advance. The predicted tumor position was compared to its observed position to establish the accuracy with which the filter could dynamically track tumor motion under nonstationary conditions. These results were compared to simplified linear versions of the filter. The two lung cancer patients exhibited complex respiratory behavior in which the correlation between surrogate marker and tumor position changed with each cycle of breathing. By automatically and continuously adjusting its parameters to the observations, the neural network achieved better tracking accuracy than the fixed and adaptive linear filters. Variability and instability in human respiration complicate the task of predicting tumor position from surrogate breathing signals. Our results show that adaptive signal-processing filters can provide more accurate tumor position estimates than simpler stationary filters when presented with nonstationary breathing motion.     

Characterization of an adaptive filter for the analysis of variable latency neuroelectric signals

An adaptive filter system has been developed whereby variable latency neuroelectric signals may be detected and separated from associated noise. The system is based on correlation-averaging techniques which are described in detail. The adaptive property of the system derives from iterative correlation and averaging of the data signals and permits the recognition of signals the specific waveshapes of which are not known in advance. The system consitutes a general pattern recognition device. It has been shown to be applicable to the analysis of evoked potentials of variable latency as well as to the analysis of patterns of EEG activity. Further applications include the analysis of multiple, complex signals such as miniature potentials from single motor units in the spinal cord. The use of an adaptive filter such as this with convergence properties based on broad statistical considerations appears to have greater analytic power than have previous methods.     

400例围产胎儿心电图检测分析及异常心电图的处理

本文应用ＦＥＣＧ－Ｄ型仪对４００例围产胎儿进行了ＦＥＣＧ的检测及分析。结果成功３６３例，成功率为９０．８％，正常ＦＥＣＧ３１６例占成功数的８７％，异常ＦＥＣＧ４７例占成功数的１３％。在对异常ＦＥＣＧ的类型及原因的分析中发现，异常ＦＥＣＧ中以ＦＳＴ下移＞５ｕｖ为多占５３．２％，其次为胎儿心动过速２５．６％，胎儿心动过缓１０．６％。胎儿心律不齐６．３％，ＦＱＲＳ时限增宽４．３％。胎儿心电图异常的原因为胎儿窘迫占７８．７％，脐带绕颈１２．８％，提示胎儿宫内缺氧是引起围产ＦＥＣＧ异常的主要原因，２２例（４７％）异常ＦＥＣＧ分别经胎盘给药、吸氧、输液等处理转为正常。     

Comparison between the AC and DC measurement of electrodermal activity

Recording electrodermal activity is a well‐accepted physiological measurement for clinical approaches and research. Historically, applying a DC (direct current) signal to the skin to measure the conductance is the most common practice for exogenous recordings. However, this method can be subject to error due to electrode polarization even with “nonpolarizing” electrodes—a problem that can be eliminated with alternating current (AC) methodology. For that reason, Boucsein et al. ( 2012 ) called for research demonstrating an AC method that is validated by comparison to standard DC methodology. Additionally, the complex structure of human skin has electrical properties that include both resistance and capacitance, and AC recording enables the measurement of skin susceptance (associated with current flow through capacitors). Finally, AC recording permits the simultaneous recording of the endogenous skin potential. In this paper, the results from a direct comparison between both methods are presented, which has not been reported previously. The results demonstrated excellent agreement between a 20 Hz AC method and a standard DC method, supporting the validity of the AC recording methodology employed. The results also showed that an applied voltage of 0.2 V is sufficient for DC recordings.