LabVIEW based non-invasive Single Channel Fetal Electrocardiogram Extraction

A non-invasive technique for monitoring fetal cardiac activities is essential during the period of pregnancy and labour. Fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) monitoring aids the obstetricians to make quick decisions during the time of emergency situations. The major interference of maternal ECG (MECG) amidst other noises overrides the proper detection of fetal heart rate. Among the traditional algorithms adaptive noise cancellation is more effective and successful for single channel denoising of ECG signal. Combination of Savitzky Golay filter with Coiflet wavelet transform diminishes the noises and extracts MECG. The adaptive filter works with extracted MECG as a reference signal, without the need of acquiring mother's heart signal. The extraction of FECG with least mean square, Normalized least mean square and recursive least square are compared based on its performance. The entire work is developed using virtual instrumentation in Labview environment.