Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057

Available at http://www.joics.com
Extraction of Fetal Electrocardiogram Using Online Least
Squares Support Vector Machines

Liang Han

, Xiujuan Pu, Na Zhou, Bowei Zhang, Wenhao Jiang

College of Communication Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400030, China
Abstract
A novel method based on Online Least Squares Support Vector Machine (OLS-SVM) is proposed to model
a time-variant Fetal Electrocardiogram (FECG) extraction problem. The proposed method extracts the
FECG from the abdominal composite signal of the pregnant woman. The Maternal Electrocardiogram
(MECG) component in the abdominal composite signal is a nonlinear time-variant transformation of
the MECG signal and the nonlinear time-variant transformation is online learning by an OLS-SVM. An
optimal estimation of the MECG component in the abdominal composite signal is obtained by the MECG
signal undergoing the nonlinear time-variant transformation. The FECG signal is extracted by removing
the optimal estimation of the MECG component from the abdominal composite signal. To evaluate the
performance of FECG extraction method, singular value decomposition and cross-correlation were used
to estimate the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for an ensemble of FECG waveforms. The experimental
results show that the clear FECG signal can be extracted even under the condition of the fetal QRS
wave being entirely overlapped with the maternal QRS wave in the abdominal composite signal and its
SNR was signicantly increased compared with traditional methods. The experimental results verify
proposed method.
Keywords: Fetal Electrocardiogram Signal extraction; Maternal Electrocardiogram Component;
Nonlinear Transformation; Support Vector Machines
1 Introduction
The Fetal Electrocardiogram (FECG) is an objective indicator of the health of the intrauterine
fetus. By monitoring the FECG during pregnancy, evidence can be got concerning the ability of
the fetus to adapt to anoxia and arrhythmia. The early diagnosis of any cardiac defects before
delivery increases the eectiveness of the appropriate treatment [1-4]. The FECG measure method
that place electrodes on the mothers abdomen is deeply welcomed by physicians and pregnant
women for its convenient and noninvasive. But in the method, the FECG is largely distorted

Project supported by Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC No. 2008BB2322 and Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities in China No. CDJZR 10160002, CDJRC 10160001.

Corresponding author.
Email address: hanliangaa@yahoo.com.cn (Liang Han).
15487741/ Copyright 2011 Binary Information Press
November 2011
2046 L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057
by dierent types of noise include the Maternal Electrocardiogram (MECG) component in the
abdominal composite signal, Maternal Electromyogram (EMG), 50 Hz power line interference,
baseline abdominal composite signal, the amplitude of which is much higher than that of the
FECG so that the FECG is often completely masked by the former [2-4]. Moreover, there is
a spectral overlap between the FECG and the MECG component in the abdominal composite
signal, the conventional frequency selective ltering can not be used in the FECG extraction eld
[3]. Therefore, FECG extraction is still under study.
In order to suppress the MECG component in the abdominal composite signal, many methods
have been introduced into the FECG extraction eld. The Least Mean Square (LMS) adaptive
lter, that rstly used by Widrow to extract FECG in 1975, failed to yield good results in the
case of canceling nonlinear and non-stationary interferences [5]. Recently, Blind Source Separation
(BSS) has been widely used to model the problem and showed more satised results than those
by classical methods [6-7]. But BSS required multiple leads to collect several electrocardiogram
(ECG) signals and a lot of mathematical computations [8]. The polynomial networks technique
overcame the limitation of BSS and showed encouraging promise on FECG extraction from two
ECG recordings [4]. However, although many advantages owned, Articial Neural Network (ANN)
also have drawbacks, such as non-convex quadric minimization, which may result in multiple
minima and the risk of over tting [9].
Recently, Support Vector Machines (SVM) developed by Vapnik have gained popularity duo
to many attractive features capable of overcoming the limitations connected to the ANN. This
is due to the Structural Risk Minimization (SRM) principle embodied by the SVM, which has
been demonstrated to be more eective than the traditional Empirical Risk Minimization (ERM)
principle exploited by the ANN. Based on the SRM principle, the SVM possesses the advantage
to control the models complexity and generalization ability [9, 10, 11]. Thus the SVM are the
very methods to deal with problems with limited samples and large dimensions better than the
conventional machine-learning methods like the ANN.
To avoid the main drawback of standard SVM, which is high computational complexity, Least
Squares SVM (LS-SVM) was introduced by Suykens [13]. The LS-SVM is algorithmically more
eective, because the solution uses equality constraints instead of inequality constraints and a
least squares error term in order to obtain a linear set of equations in the dual space. But the
traditional LSSVM is not suitable to model time-varying systems for its oine learning principle.
The Online LS-SVM (OLS-SVM) has showed encouraging promise for the ability of online adjusts
the model parameters of time-varying systems.
In this paper, the OLS-SVM is attempted to the FECG extraction eld because the FECG
extraction modeling can be regarded as a typical function approximation task, which could be
done by the ANN traditionally. We investigate the use of OLS-SVM to approximate the non-
linear transformation which the MECG undergoes when it travels from the maternal heart to
the abdominal area, and hence an optimal estimation of the MECG component in the abdom-
inal composite signal was got. The FECG was extracted by canceling the optimal estimation
of the MECG component in the abdominal signal. We present results of FECG extraction on
real ECG data, and specically show some analysis and comparison of between the proposed
method and two other FECG extraction techniques: Normalized Least Means Squares (NLMS)
and polynomial network.
L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057 2047
2 Problem Model
In the proposed method based on OLS-SVM, two leads were needed to obtain ECG signals. One
was attached at the thoracic area of the pregnant woman far away from the abdomen to provide
sampled independent thoracic ECG signal m
i
where i is an integer indicating the discrete-time
index, or sample number. As the thoracic ECG signal is predominantly maternal, the FECG
component in it is assumed to be negligible. The other was attached at the proper abdominal
area to record sampled abdominal composite signal y
i
with a good FECG-to-noise ratio.
Embedded in the abdominal composite signal are three signals: one is the powerful MECG
component s
i
, which is a deformation of the MECG due to the fact that the signal is measured
far away from its source (the maternal heart), and consequently it encounters some nonlinear
transformation as it travels to the abdominal area, another is the FECG d
i
and a third is additive
noise
i
from other sources [6]. Thus the abdominal composite signal y
i
can be expressed as
y
i
= s
i
+ d
i
+
i
i = 1, 2, , n (1)
and the MECG component in the abdominal composite signal s
i
is represented by [4]:
s
i
= f (x
i
) (2)
where the function f () denotes the nonlinear relationship between the MECG and the MECG
component in the abdominal composite signal. If an optimal approximation of f (),

f (), is
obtained, an optimal estimation of the MECG component s
i
( s
i
=

f (m
i
)) can be easily got.
This will allow for suppressing the MECG component in the abdominal composite signal, and
consequently an optimal estimation of the FECG with noise is given by:
r
i
= y
i
s
i
= y
i


f (x
i
) (3)
From what have been discussed, it should be noted that the key point of FECG extraction is to
gain the optimal approximation of the nonlinear function f (). In clinical practice, the FECG
is presently extracted under the condition of the pregnant woman is in resting state and the
FECG extraction time is limited. Therefore, the nonlinear transformf ()is commonly considered
time-invariant and the time-invariant FECG extraction model is established.
It is an important problem of clinical FECG extraction that how to extract the FECG under
the condition of the pregnant woman is in active state or the FECG extraction time is long. Un-
der such conditions, nonlinear transform f () is time-variant and a time-variant FECG extraction
model should be established. In this paper, this can be achieved by an OLS-SVM online learn-
ing the relationship between the given partly MECG (inputs) and the corresponding abdominal
composite signal (outputs). Then the trained OLS-SVM can be used to predict output for given
input.
3 Online Least Square Support Vector Machines
3.1 Least Square Support Vector Machines
The algorithm of LS-SVM used for nonlinear function estimate is described as follows [11, 12]:
2048 L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057
Consider a given set of training samples {(x
i
, y
i
) , i = 1, 2, , l}, in which x
i
is the input vector
and y
i
is the corresponding target value for sample i. The goal of function approximation is to
nd the underlying relation between the input and the target value.
With a SVM regression nonlinear, the training data x
i
is mapped by into a high-dimensional
feature space where a linear function

f (x) = w
T
(x) + b (4)
is performed. Where b is the bias, w is a weight vector of the same dimension as the feature space
and

f () is the estimate of nonlinear function f () between input x
i
and output y
i
.
The approximation error for sample i is dened as:
e
i
= y
i


f (x
i
) (5)
and for the given data we search for those weights that give the smallest summed quadratic
error of the training samples in case of LS-SVM. Because this can easily lead to overtting, ridge
regression (a form of regularization) is used to smooth the approximation. The minimization of
the error together with the regularization is given as
min
w,b
J (w, e) =
1
2
w
T
w +
C
2
l

i=1
e
2
i
s.t.y
i
= w
T
(x
i
) + b + e
i
, i = 1, 2, , l
(6)
where C is the regularization parameter.
Using the Lagrange multiplier method, this quadratic programming problem (primal problem)
shown in (6) can be formulated as the Wolfe dual form
L(w, b, e; ) = J (w, e)
l

i=1

i
_
w
T
(x
i
) + b + e
i
y
i
_
. (7)
In this equation,
i
is called the Lagrange multipliers. The conditions for optimality are given by
_

_
L
w
= 0 w =
l

i=1

i
(x
i
)
L
b
= 0 w =
l

i=1

i
= 0
L
e
i
= 0
i
= Ce
i
L

i
= 0 w
T
(x
i
) + b + e
i
y
i
= 0
(8)
Eliminating w and e
i
, one obtains the following linear KarushKuhnTucker system in and b
_
0

1
T

1 Q + C
1
I
__
b

_
=
_
0
y
_
(9)
L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057 2049
with
y = (y
1
, y
2
, , y
l
)
T
,

1 = (1, 1, , 1)
T
,
= (
1
,
2
, ,
l
)
T
, Q = {Q
ij
}
ll
=
_
(x
i
)
T
(x
j
)
_
ll
i, j = 1, 2, , l .
Mercers theorem is applied within the Q matrix
Q
ij
= (x
i
)
T
(x
j
) = K (x
i
, x
j
) (10)
The solution of this set of equations results in a vector of Lagrange multipliers
i
and a bias b.
The regression function is then obtained as

f (x) =
l

i=1

i
K (x
i
, x) + b. (11)
3.2 Online Least Square Support Vector Machines
As an online learning model, training samples were selected by sliding window of length l.
At current sample time k, the training samples can be expressed as {(X (k) , Y (k))}, where
X (k) = [x
k
, x
k+1
, , x
k+l1
]
T
, Y (k) = [y
k
, y
k+1
, , y
k+l1
]
T
. Therefore Q matrix, and
bare correspondingly expressed as Q
ij
(k) = K (x
i
, x
j
) , i, j = k, k + 1 , k + l 1, (k) =
[
k
,
k+1
, ,
k+l1
]
T
, b (k) = b
k
and y (k) = y
k
.
Note A(k) = Q(k) + C
1
I, where C is the regularization parameter, the linear equation (9)
can be expressed as:
_
0

1
T

1 A(k)
__
b (k)
(k)
_
=
_
0
y (k)
_
(12)
where A(k) is a symmetric positive semi denite matrix and A(k)
1
can be obtained. By least-
square method, b (k) and (k) is achieved from (12):
b (k) =

1
T
A(k)
1
y (k)

1
T
A(k)
1

1
(k) = A(k)
1
_
y (k) b (k)

1
_
(13)
Therefore, the equitation (11) of the LS-SVM output is

f
k+l
(x) =
k+l1

i=k

i
(k) K (x
i
, x) + b (k) . (14)
At next sample time k+1, a new sample (x
k+l
, y
k+l
) was added into sliding window and the oldest
sample (x
k
, y
k
) was lost. Therefore Q matrix is Q
ij
(k + 1) = K (x
i
, y
j
) , i, j = k+1, k+2, , k+l
and A(k + 1) = Q(k + 1) + C
1
I.
2050 L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057
4 The Method of FECG Extraction Using OLS-SVM
Using the proposed method to extract FECG, the detail steps are as follows:
Step 1: Selecting kernel function
The kernel functions used in the OLS-SVM include linear kernel function, polynomial kernel
function, radial base kernel function and multi-layer perception kernel function. In this paper,
the OLS-SVM with a Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel has been considered for its stronger
regression ability. The RBF kernel used in equation (14) is
K (x
i
, x) = exp
_
x
i
x
2
_

2
_
(15)
where
2
is the constant dening the kernel width.
Before using the OLS-SVM, some OLS-SVM parameters need to be determined: the constant
dening of the kernel width
2
and the penalty parameter C. By means of the standard LOO
method [13], the variables are chosen as C = 10,
2
= 3.
Step 2: Choosing training data
The length of sliding window in the OLS-SVM was chose as l = 200 and at the moment k,
the training samples of OLS-SVM were {(x
i
, y
i
) , i = k, k + 1, , k + l 1}. In order to better
approximate the nonlinear functionf (), inputs to a OLS-SVM were the MECG x
i
(i = 1, 2, , l)
and its J time-derivations [4]. The experiments were carried out with dierent value of J, and
J = 2 is a best choice as higher order beyond two is not found to improve the visual quality of
the extracted FECG. In vector notation, inputs to the OLS-SVM are the vector y (k) and the
matrix X (k), where
X (k) =
_
x
k
x
k+1
x
k+l1
_
T
=
_

_
x
k
x
k
x
(2)
k
x
k+1
x
k+1
x
(2)
k+1
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
x
k+l1
x
k+l1
x
(2)
k+l1
_

_
y (k) = [ y
k
y
k+1
y
k+l1
]
T
. (16)
Step 3: Training OLS-SVM
X (k) and y (k) were inputted into the OLS-SVM and Q(k), A(k), b (k) and (k) were cal-
culated. The real output sequence of the OLS-SVM is a nonlinear transform of X (k) denoted
by s (k)
_
s (k) =

f
k+l
(X (k))
_
, which is an estimation of the MECG component in y (k) at the
moment k.
The dierence between the desired output sequence and the real output sequence of the OLS-
SVM is error signal denoted by e, that is given by
e (k) = y (k) s (k) . (17)
The nonlinear regression function shown in equation (14) was achieved by minimizing both train-
ing error E
_
e (k)
T
e (k)
_
and model complexity, and the regression function

f
k+l
() is the optimal
approximation of the nonlinear function f
k+l
().
L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057 2051
Step 4: Extracting FECG
To obtain the FECG at sample time k + l, the ECG data (x
i
, y
i
) , i = k + l was input to the
trained OLS-SVM. An optimal estimation of the MECG component in y
i
denoted by s
i
can be
got by
s
i
=

f
k+l
(x
i
) (18)
and according to (1), an optimal estimation of the FECG with noise at sample time k + l is
achieved by
r
i
= u
i
s
i
. (19)
To obtain the FECG at next sample time k +l +1, we replaced k with k +1 and then returned
step 2 to get the nonlinear transform

f
k+l+1
(). According to step 3 and step 4, the FECG at the
moment k + l + 1will be achieved.
5 Experimental Results
5.1 Results of the Proposed Method
To weigh the power of the proposed method, the real ECG signals contributed by Lieven De
Lathauwer were used in this paper [14]. These signals represent 10s recordings from eight dierent
skin electrodes located on dierent points of a pregnant womans body with 250 Hz sampling
frequency.
In the proposed method, only one abdominal composite signal and one thoracic ECG signal
were needed. We selected the rst abdominal recording, Abd1, as y
i
(i = 1, 2, , 2500) because
it appears to contain a strongest FECG component, and we arbitrarily chose the last thoracic
recording, Thr3, as x
i
(i = 1, 2, , 2500) since all three thoracic recordings appear to be maternal
[5]. The two selected ECG signals are shown in Fig. 1 (a) (b). The sampling number and relative
magnitude were denoted by x-axis and y-axis respectively.
The results of processing the ECG signals using the proposed steps in section 3 are shown
in Fig. 1 (c). Fig. 1 (c) depicts that the MECG component in the abdominal composite signal
was completely suppressed by the proposed method and nally the clear FECG was obtained.
However, it is not easy to see how well the achieved results by looking at a large number of samples.
Therefore, Fig. 1 was zoomed to illustrate the power of the proposed method in extracting FECG.
Fig. 2 depicts 500 samples of the abdominal composite signal, the MECG component in the
abdominal composite signal and the extracted FECG. From Fig. 2, we believe that the proposed
method is able to successfully extract FECG under dierent conditions, such as fully overlap
(ellipse 1), no temporal overlap (ellipse 2) and partly overlap (ellipse 3) between the QRS wave
of the MECG component and that of the FECG component in the abdominal composite signal.
5.2 Comparison of Three Techniques
5.2.1 Visual Results
The visual results from the same ECG signals were used to compare the power of the OLS-SVM
technique, the polynomial networks technique [4] and the NLMS technique [5] in FECG extraction.
2052 L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057
_
50
0
50
(a)
_
500
0
500
1000
(b)
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
_
50
0
50
(c)
Sample number
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Sample number
0 500
y
i
x
i
r
i
1000 1500 2000 2500
Sample number
Fig. 1: The FECG extracted by the OLS-SVM (2500 samples) (a) abdominal composite signal, (b)
MECG and (c) extracted FECG.
r
i
S
i
y
i
1601 1701 1801 1901 2001 2100 2100
50
0
50
(a)
1601 1701 1801 1901 2001 2100
500
0
500
1000
(b)
1601 1701 1801 1901 2001 2100
50
0
50
(c)
1
2
3
Sample number
Sample number
Sample number
Fig. 2: The FECG extracted by the OLS-SVM (1601-2100 samples) (a) abdominal composite signal, (b)
MECG component in the abdominal composite signal and (c) extracted FECG.
The results from 300 sample data are described in Fig. 3, where r
i1
, r
i2
and r
i3
respectively denotes
the extracted FECG by the NLMS technique, the polynomial networks technique and the OLS-
SVM technique.
It is clear in Fig. 3 that the OLS-SVM technique and the polynomial networks technique make
good in canceling the MECG component in the abdominal composite signal with a slight advan-
tage of the OLS-SVM technique. However, the NLMS technique yields a relatively worse eect
L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057 2053
with the MECG component is still visible in the extracted FECG as indicated by two ellipses in
Fig. 3 (b).
To demonstrate more obviously the advantages of the OLS-SVM technique over the polynomial
networks technique, the extracted results from the 2500 sample ECG signals by the two techniques
are showed in Fig. 4. Fig. 4 depicts the extracted FECG by the OLS-SVM technique is more
500 560 620 680 740 800

50
0
50

50
0
50

50
0
50

50
0
50
(d)
(c)
(b)
(a)
1 2
Sample number
500 560 620 680 740 800
Sample number
500 560 620 680 740 800
Sample number
500 560 620 680 740 800
Sample number
r
i
3
r
i
2
r
i
1
y
i
Fig. 3: FECG extraction contrast experiments (500-800 samples) (a) abdominal composite signal, ex-
tracted FECG using (b) the NLMS technique, (c) the polynomial networks technique and (d) the OLS-
SVM technique.
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
50

50
0
50

50
0
50

50
0
(a)
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
(b)
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
1 2
(c)
Sample number
Sample number
Sample number
r
i
3
r
i
2
y
i
Fig. 4: FECG extraction contrast experiments (2500 samples) (a) abdominal composite signal, extracted
FECG using (b) the polynomial networks technique and (c) the OLS-SVM technique.
2054 L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057
satised than that by the polynomial networks technique, especially in some parts as pointed out
by two rectangles, the zoom of which is orderly shown in Figs. 5 and 6.
Figs. 5 and 6 illustrate that visible remnant of the MECG component in the extracted FECG
(ellipse) by the polynomial networks technique. From the Figs. 5 and 6, we believe that the
performance of the OLS-SVM technique is better than the polynomial networks technique in
FECG extraction.
(a)
(b)
850 870 890 910 930 950

50
0
50

50
0
50

50
0
50
(c)
Sample number
850 870 890 910 930 950
Sample number
850 870 890 910 930 950
Sample number
r
i
3
r
i
2
y
i
Fig. 5: FECG extraction contrast experiments (850-950 samples) (a) abdominal composite signal, ex-
tracted FECG using (b) the polynomial networks technique and (c) the OLS-SVM technique.
2400 2410 2420 2430 2440 2450 2460 2470
0
50
50
0
50
50
0
50
50
Sample number
2400 2410 2420 2430 2440 2450 2460 2470
Sample number
2400 2410 2420 2430 2440 2450 2460 2470
Sample number
r
i
3
r
i
2
y
i
Fig. 6: FECG extraction contrast experiments (2400-2470 samples) (a) abdominal composite signal,
extracted FECG using (b) the polynomial networks technique and (c) the OLS-SVM technique.
L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057 2055
5.2.2 Quality Assessment
How to estimate the performance of the FECG extraction methods is still under study. In 1997,
Outram N. J. [15] [16] estimating the Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) of FECG signal using singular
value decomposition and cross-correlation, the detail steps are as follows:
Step 1: Signal preprocessing
Considered that there are only fetal components and uncorrelated, random noise in an ensemble
of 2500 FECG signal r
i3
obtained in section 4.1. If this hypothesis is accepted, the signal is rstly
segmented into Npulse of length 100 and each segment of signal contains a complete QRS wave
group, note as m(i)(i = 1, 2, , N, N = 22), which are arranged as columns of a matrix U
10022
.
All the vectors m(i) are zero mean and normalized to unit length, that is m(i)
T
m(i) = 1.
Step 2: Estimating the SNR using singular value decomposition
The singular value decomposition of matrix U
T
U was performed. The rst singular value (the
biggest singular value) is the power of the FECG signal and the sum of other singular values is
the power of noise. Thus, the SNR of the extracted FECG signal is as follows:
SNR
SV D
=

2
1
N

i=2

2
i
. (20)
Where
i
is the singular value of the matrix U
T
U.
Step 3: Estimating the SNR using cross-correlation
Given the assumption that the noise is random, and that the signal does not correlate with the
noise, according to the correlation coecient of two columns FECG signals in matrix U, the SNR
between two pulses m(i), m(j) can be achieved as:
SNR
cor
=

m(i)
T
m(j)
1 m(i)
T
m(j)
i = j, i, j = 1, 2, , 22
. (21)
One enhancement of this method is to work with the complete ensemble of ECG waveforms and
estimate the Root Mean Squared (RMS) SNR as follows:
SNR
RMS
=

1
. (22)
The parameter =
2
N(N 1)
N2

i=0
N1

j=i+1
m(i)
T
m(j) is the mean estimated signal power, and where
N is the number of waveforms in the ensemble.
Step 4: Comparison of SNR estimation
Calculate the SNR of the FECG signals r
i1
, r
i2
, r
i3
using singular value decomposition and
cross-correlation. Where r
i1
, r
i2
, r
i3
was obtained by the NLMS algorithm, the polynomial neural
networks and the OLS-SVM respectively. The results are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 show that the SNR of the OLS-SVM technique is higher than that of the NLMS
algorithm and the polynomial neural networks. Thus a conclusion is drawn that the OLS-SVM
2056 L. Han et al. / Journal of Information & Computational Science 8: 11 (2011) 20452057
Table 1: Comparison of SNR estimation using dierent techniques
SNR
SV D
(dB) SNR
RMS
(dB)
NLMS 6.657 4.9653
PNN 7.2126 6.2459
OLS-SVM 8.9938 8.0953
technique has the better performance and clinical application prospect than the NLMS algorithm
and the polynomial networks technique.
In summary, the OLS-SVM technique is the best one among the NLMS technique, the polyno-
mial networks technique and the OLS-SVM technique.
6 Conclusion and Prospect
In this paper, a new method was proposed to extract the FECG from the abdominal composite
signal. Two leads were used to collect the abdominal composite signal and MECG respectively.
The proposed method utilizes the OLS-SVM to online approximate the nonlinear relationship
between the MECG recorded at the thorax area and the abdominal composite signal recorded
at the abdominal area of the pregnant woman. Once the optimal approximation of the nonlin-
ear relationship was gained, the optimal estimation of the MECG component in the abdominal
composite signal was obtained and hence the clear FECG can be extracted by subtracting the
optimal estimation of the MECG component in the abdominal ECG signal.
We have validated the proposed method on real ECG signals contributed by Lieven De Lath-
auwer, and the results illustrated that the proposed method can successfully extract FECG
whether it is overlapped or not overlapped with the QRS wave of the MECG component in
the abdominal composite signal. Also visual comparison and performance index comparison were
performed between the proposed technique, the NLMS technique and the polynomial networks
technique in terms of the quality of the extracted FECG. Comparing results showed that the
NLMS technique is inferior to both the proposed technique and the polynomial networks tech-
nique, and the proposed technique showed advantage in performance over the polynomial networks
technique.
In this paper, there still contains added noises in the extracted FECG signal using the proposed
method. How to lter added noises using one denoising technology, such as wavelet transform,
can be further studied. The kernel function of support vector machine has some inuence on its
non-linear approximation performance. How to design the kernel function of good performance
according to the characteristics of the FECG extraction will also be under study.
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