• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.198-205
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• 2005

In this paper, we proposed a new algorithm for the separation of fetal ECG from single channel abdominal ECG. The algorithm consists of a stage of demixing vector calculation for initial signal and a stage of fetal beat detection for the rest of signal. The demixing vector was obtained by applying independent component analysis technique to projected signals into time-frequency domain. For the test of this algorithm, simulation signals, De Lathauwer's data and some measured data, which was acquired from 8 healthy volunteers whose pregnant periods ranged from 22 weeks to 35 weeks and whose ages from 27 to 37, were used. For each data, the accuracy of fetal beat detection was $100\%$ and with the location of fetal beats, fetal heart rate variability and morphology could be offered. In conclusion, this proposed algorithm showed the possibility of fetal beat separation with a single channel abdominal ECG and it might be adopted to a fetal health monitoring system, by which a single channel abdominal ECG is acquired.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.467-468
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• 2007

In this paper, we have proposed a new method to extract the fetal ECG from a pregnant woman's abdominal signal using least square acceleration (LSA) filter and adaptive impulse correlation (AIC) filter. To evaluate the performance, the proposed method and other fetal ECG extraction techniques were processed using the real ECG data and then the results were compared. According to comparative results, the proposed method is powerful and successful for extracting the fetal ECG. It was able to separate perfectly even though the fetal beats overlap with the QRS wave of the maternal beats and to extract fetal ECG using any single-channel abdominal signal measured from pregnant woman's abdominal surface. Also, it could be implemented easily by fast computation time and simple structure. It is sure that our method could be useful for portable fetal monitoring system.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.495-501
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• 2006

Diagnostics of unborn baby is mainly aimed at prediction and detection of occurrence of intrauterine hypoxia. Consequences resulting from fetal hypoxia appear in its heart activity. In this study, we have developed a new non-invasive system for fetal hypoxia diagnosis which provides systolic time interval(STI) parameters on the basis of analysis of electrical and mechanical heart activity together. For this we have worked on 1) the proper lead system for the acquisition of abdominal ECG, 2) the independent component analysis based signal processing and fetal ECG separation, 3) the development of a hardware which consists of an abdominal ECG amplifying module and an ultrasound module and 4) the detection of characteristic points of FECG and Doppler signal and the extraction of diagnostic parameters. The developed system was evaluated by the clinical experiments in which 33 subjects were participated. The acquired STI by the system were distributed within the ranges from the well-established invasive results of other researchers. From this, we can conclude that the developed non-invasive fetal hypoxia diagnosis system is useful.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.10
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• pp.202-208
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• 2012

Fetal heart rate monitoring is important information to assess fetal well-being. Non-invasive fetal ECG (electrocardiography) can be derived from maternal abdominal signal. And various promising signal processing methods have been introduced to extract fetal ECG from mother's composite abdominal signal. However, non-invasive fetal ECG monitoring still has not been widely used in clinical practice due to insufficient reliable measurement and difficulty of signal processing. In application of signal processing method to extract fetal ECG, it might be lower signal to noise ratio due to time varying white Gaussian noise. In this paper, time varying Kalman smoother is proposed to remove white noise in fetal ECG and its feasibility is confirmed. Wiener process was set as Kalman system model and covariance matrix was modified according to white Gaussian noise level. Modified error covariance matrix changed Kalman gain and degree of smoothness. Optimal covariance matrix according to various amplitude in Gaussian white noise was extracted by 5 channel fetal ECG model, and feasibility of proposed method could be confirmed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.26 no.9
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• pp.1444-1452
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• 1989

This paper describes the implementation of a real time fetal ECG monitoring system in which an adaptive multi-channel noise canceller is realized using the Texas Instruments TMS32020 progrmmmable ditital signal processor. An ECG signal from the electrode placed on the mother's abdomen and three ECGs from those on the chest are applied as the desired signal and the referened inputs, respectively, of the multi-channel filter. The coefficients of the filter are updated using the LMS algorithm such that the output of the multi-channel filter copies the maternal ECG embedded in the abdominal ECG. The enhanced fetal ECG is obtained by subtracting the filter output from the abdominal ECG, and the difference signal is recorded. Both off-line and on-line experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the parameters for the digital signal processing algorithms and the prototype system.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.431-438
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• 2017

In this paper, the abdomen ECG(AECG) is employed to measure the mother's ECG instead of the conventioanl thoracic ECG measurement. The fetus ECG signal can be extracted from the AECG using an algorithm that utilizes the mobile fetal ECG measurement platform, which is based on the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy). The algorithm has been implemented by using a replacement processor processed directly from the platform BLE instead of the large statistical data processing required in the ICA(Independent component analysis). The proposed algorithm can be implemented on a mobile BLE wireless ECG system hardware platform to process the maternal ECG. Wireless technology can realize a compact, low-power radio system for short distance communication and the IOT(Intenet of Things) enables the transmission of real-time ECG data. It was also implemented in the form of a compact module in order for mothers to be able to download and store the collected ECG data without having to interrupt or move the logger, and later link the module to a computer for downloading and analyzing the data. A mobile ECG measurement prototype is manufactured and tested to measure the FECG for pregnant women. The experimental results verify a real-time FECG extraction capability for the proposed system. In this paper, we propose an ECG measurement system that shows approximately 91.65% similarity to the MIT database and the conventional algorithm and SNR performance about 10% better.

• Neonatal Medicine
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.59-63
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• 2021

An important, albeit rare, cause of fetal bradycardia is long QT syndrome (LQTS). Congenital LQTS is an ion channelopathy caused by mutations in genes encoding cardiac ion channel proteins. Fetal onset of LQTS imposes high risk of life-threatening tachyarrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Here, we report the case of a female newborn with fetal onset of bradycardia and a 2:1 atrioventricular (AV) block. After birth, a 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) revealed bradycardia with QT prolongation of a corrected QT (QTc) interval of 680 ms and pseudo 2:1 AV block. Genetic testing identified a heterozygous Gly402Ser (c.1204G>A) mutation in CACNA1C, confirming the diagnosis of LQTS type 8 (LQT8). The patient received propranolol at a daily dose of 2 mg/kg. Mexiletine was subsequently administered owing to the sustained prolongation of the QT interval and pseudo 2:1 AV block. One week after mexiletine inception, the ECG still showed QT interval prolongation (QTc, 632 ms), but no AV block was observed. There were no life-threatening tachyarrhythmias in a follow-up period of 13 months.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.589-598
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• 2004

We propose a new algorithm to extract the fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) from a multi-channel electrocardiogram (ECG) recorded at the chest and abdomen of a pregnant woman. To extract the FECG from the composite abdominal ECG, the classical time-domain method based on singular value decomposition (SVD) has been generally used. However, this method has some disadvantages, such as its high degree of computational complexity and the necessary assumption that vectors between the FECG and the maternal electrocardiogram (MECG) should be orthogonal. The proposed algorithm, which uses SVD in a discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain, compensates for these disadvantages. To perform SVD with lower computational complexity, DCT coefficients corresponding to high-frequency components were eliminated on the basis of the properties of the DCT coefficients and the frequency characteristics of the FECG. Moreover, to extract the pure FECG with little influence of the direction of the vectors between the FECG and MECG, three new channels were made out of the MECG suppressed in the composite abdominal ECG, and the new channels were appended to the original multi-channel ECG. The performance of the proposed algorithm and the classical time-domain method based on SVD were compared using simulated and real data. It was experimentally verified that the proposed algorithm can extract the pure FECG with reduced computational complexity.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 1987

In this study, we described the result of computer simulation which is real time extraction of FECG and FHR using adaptive digital signal processing. And we designed 2 channel cassette interface circuit to save FECG signal.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.49 no.9
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• pp.328-334
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• 2012

Continuous fetal heart beat monitoring has assisted clinicians in assuring fetal well-being during antepartum and intrapartum. Fetal heart rate (FHR) is an important parameter of fetal health during pregnancy. The Doppler ultrasound is one of very useful methods that can non-invasively measure FHR. Although it has been commonly used in clinic, inaccurate heart rate reading has not been completely resolved.. The objective of this study is to improve detection algorithm of FHR from Doppler ultrasound signal with simple method. We modified autocorrelation function to enhance signal periodicity and adopted adaptive window size and shifted for data segment to be analysed. The proposed method was applied to real measured data, and it was verified that beat-to-beat FHR estimation result was comparable with the reference fetal ECG data. This simple and effective method is expected to be implemented in the embedded system.