1995 IEEE-EMBC and CMBEC
Theme 1: Cardiovascular System
FETAL ECG EXTRACTION FROMSINGLE CHANNEL MATERNAL ECG
USING SVD AND SVR SPECTRUM
P.P. Kanjilal and Goutam Saha
Dept. of Electronics & ECE, I.I.T. Kharagpur, INDIA 721302
ABSTRACT
Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and ana-
lysis based on Singular Value Ratio (SVR)
Spectrum have been used f o r the extraction
of f e t a l ECG (F-ECG) from a single channel
composite maternal ECG (CM-ECG) signal. The
maternal and the f e t a l ECG components are
identified in terms of the SV-decomposed
modes of the the appropriately configured
d a t a matrices, and the desired F-ECG is
obtained through selective separation of
SV-decomposed components.
1 INTRODUCTION
There has been different approaches f o r the
extraction of F-ECG from multiple CM-ECG
signals [1,21. Proposed is the use of
single channel CM-ECG signal, from which
F-ECG is extracted through SVR-aided
SV-decompositio domain separation.
2 PRELIMINARIES
SVDTof an mxn matrix A i s given by [31 A =
USV , where U, V are orthogonal matrices, S
= [diag {si, ..,sp):Ol, slz..~s$O with max
Rank(A)=p= min(m,n). If an n-periodic sig-
nal {x(k)) occupies successive rows of A,
p=1. The most dominant pefiodic component
in {x(k)) is given by slulvl,where u1 and
vi are the 1st. columns of U and V respec-
tively. If Rank(A)=l, s1/s2 = infinity; if
Rank(A)>l, sl/sz drops.1f {x(k)}+ A, f o r
varying n, the corresponding spectrum of
s1/s2 will exhibit repeating peaks at the
dominant periodicity; this spectrum is
called the SVR spectrum [4,51. In this
work, the M-ECG and F-ECG period-lengths
are determined using SVR spectrum.
3 OUTLINE OF F-ECG EXTRACTION PROCEDURE
The CM-ECG signa1 is f i r s t bidirectionally
low-pass filtered t o eliminate trend [SI.
0-7803-2475-7197$1 0.00 01 997 IEEE
The perioidic segments of CM-ECG data are
aligned into the successive rows of matrix
A. A is SV-decomposed and the most dominant
mode A, = ulslvl is separated from A,
forming ARl=A-A,. The extracted component
represents the maternal ECG component.
The time series formed from the suc-
cessive rows of the residual matrix AR1
will contain the F-ECG component along with
the noise. The residual series is rearran-
ged into a matrix B, with each row contain-
ing 1 fetal ECG cycle. The component ulslvT
of B gives the desired F-ECG component.
4 RESULTS
The bidirectionally filtered (with filter
pole at 0.88) CM-ECG signal (Fig.1) is
shown in Fig.2. The SVR spectrum (Fig.5) of
this signal showed a periodicity of 81
time-samples. On separation of the M-ECG
component (Fig.31, the residual series
showed presence of a periodic component of
49 in i t s SVR spectrum (Fig.6). The extrac-
ted F-ECG component is shown in Fig.4.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Here, the 2 unique features are (i) use of
a single CM-ECG signal and (ii) use of a
successive extraction in algebraically
orthogonal transf o m domain, instead of the
conventional frequency domain, with due
consideration of the nearly repetitive na-
ture of the signals of interest. The low-
frequency interference on the CM-ECG signal
as well as the variations in the period
lengths of the M-ECG and the F-ECG compo-
nents are taken care of. The tool used is
SVD which i s remarkably robust numerically.
REFERENCES
[ll Longini, R:L., T.A. Reichert et a1
(1977): ‘Near-orthogonal basis functions; a
187
real time fetal ECG technique', IEEE Trans.
I41 Kanjilal, P.P., and S. Palit 11995):
multiple pattern extraction using
, D., B. De alue decomposition', I E E E Trans.
(1990): 'Comparison of SVD June, t o appear.
e x t r a c t the foetal electrocardiogram from [51 Kanjilal, P.P. (1995): Adaptive Pre-
cutaneous electrode signals', diction and Predictive Control: Principles
Biol. Eng. and Comp., 28, 217- and Applications, Peter Peregrinus (IEE
G.H., and C.F. V Publication), Stevenage, in press.
Matrix Computations, The Johns Hopkins
Univ. Press, Baltimore.

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