Fetal monitoring - Innovation for prenatal diagnosis [fEKG]
Placement of abdominal electrodes to record the fetal ECG.
Fetal monitoring is currently limited in various ways. Consequently, there is a special need for non-invasive and simple methods that can be applied over longer periods, ideally also outside the clinic. Solutions eventually provide the needed all-day applications.
Placement of abdominal electrodes to record the fetal ECG
The fetal electrocardiogram (fECG), obtained through abdominal electrodes, is a method which tackles those problems. Therefore, electrical signals are recorded from electrodes placed on the belly of the mother. The signals contain the maternal ECG, fECG and noise. The separation of those signals is still mainly the subject of research.
We develop innovative algorithms to extract the fECG and do further research on characteristics of the fECG itself. In addition, we test novel fECG based markers to identify fetal development and predict pregnancy complications. Overall, we seek to develop new fetal monitoring techniques and systems.
Further information can be found on the website of the Research Group Biosignal Processing.
Abdominal signal recording (grey - abdominal signal, blue - fetal ecg)
Publications
Sponsord by the German Research Foundation
- F. Andreotti, M. Riedl, T. Himmelsbach, D. Wedekind, N. Wessel, H. Stepan, C. Schmieder, A. Jank, H. Malberg, and S. Zaunseder, “Robust fetal ECG extraction and detection from abdominal leads.,” Physiol. Meas., vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 1551–1567, Jul. 2014.
- F. Andreotti, J. Behar, S. Zaunseder, J. Oster, and G. D. Clifford, “An open-source framework for stress-testing non-invasive foetal ECG extraction algorithms.,” Physiol. Meas., vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 627–648, Apr. 2016.