Fetal Heart Rate Extraction Using Real PCG-Signals and Wavelet Transformation.

Fetal phonocardiography (fPCG) is a non-invasive measurement of the acoustic cardiac signals. Unfortunately, fPCG signals have a low signal to noise ratio which makes detection of relevant information a challenging task. In this study, analysis of fetal phonocardiograph (fPCG) signals is measured by a portable fetal doppler device Baby Heart Beat. In order to extract the fetal heart rate (fHR), the suggested approach is a wavelet transform (WT) based method that combines thresholding analysis in the WT domain for the extraction of fHRs from the underlying noise. The efficiency of the applied method in fHRs extraction has been evaluated with 15 real fHR signals, along with the simulated fPCGs public database available at PhysioBank. Results have shown promising performance in the identification of the correct location and morphology of the fHRs.