2016 10th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP)

Adaptive Signal Processing Techniques for Extracting

Abdominal Fetal Electrocardiogram
Radek Martinek (IEEE Member), Radana Kahankova, Hana Skutova, Petr Koudelka (IEEE Member),
Jan Zidek, and Jiri Koziorek
VSB – Technical University of Ostrava
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
17. listopadu 15/2172, Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic
radek.martinek@vsb.cz, radana.kahankova.st@vsb.cz

Abstract—The extraction of the Fetal Electrocardiogram
(fECG) from the composite Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal
obtained from the abdominal lead is discussed. The main point of
this paper is to introduce some of the most used Least Mean
Squares (LMS) based Finite Impulse Response (FIR) Adaptive
Filters and to determine which of them are the most effective
under varying circumstances. Experimental results suggest the
ideal combination of the chosen settings for these functions.
Results of fECG extraction are assessed by Percentage
Root-Mean-Square Difference (PRD), input and output Signal to
Noise Ratios (SNRs), and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE).
Based on simulations conclusions, optimal convergence constant
value and filter order were empirically determined. Setting the
optimal value of the convergence constant and filter order of
adaptive algorithm can be considered a contribution to original
results. These results can be used on real records fECG, where it
is difficult to determine because of the missing reference.
The strong Maternal Electrocardiogram (mECG) along with
the weak fECG is overlapping in time and in frequency as well.
Reducing the maternal component from a composite abdominal
signal is therefore a very challenging task. Many different
approaches have been proposed for detection and extraction of
the fECG with various degrees of success. These techniques
include several methods that are shown in the Figs. 1, [3], [5].
II. METHODS FOR FECG ELICITATION
The interference elimination can be implemented using a
single channel or a multichannel of the source signal. These
signals are then processed by various methods. These methods
can be divided into two groups – adaptive and non-adaptive. The
difference is in the existing or non-existing ability of the system
to adapt to the unexpected circumstances.

Keywords—fECG, mECG, adaptive filtering, Matlab, LMS,

NLMS, BLMS, DLMS

I. INTRODUCTION
The Fetal Electrocardiogram (fECG) describes the electrical
activity of the fetal heart and provides clinically significant
information about the physiological state of a fetus during the
pregnancy or the labor. Early diagnosis of the hypoxic states
(hypoxemia, hypoxia, and asphyxia) achieved by monitoring
fECG can increase the effectiveness of the treatment, [1], [2],
and [18].
There are two different techniques to record fECG – invasive
and noninvasive. The first one is the direct method of the
measurement that is provided transvaginally by an Invasive Fig. 2. Methods for fECG elicitation
Scalp Electrode (ISE). This method is considered to be accurate
because the signal is recorded directly from the fetal scalp, A. Non-adaptive methodologies
however it brings many problems and risks such as infections Non-adaptive methodologies include Wavelet Transform
for the mother and the child as well. Noninvasive techniques based techniques, Correlation methods, Subtraction
measure electrical signals by multichannel skin electrodes methodologies, Single Value Decomposition (SVD), Blind
placed on mother’s abdomen. This kind of measuring is more Subspace Separation (BSS), Averaging techniques, Finite
convenient, non-invasive and can be used not only during the Impulse Response (FIR) and Infinite Impulse Response (IIR)
labor but before it, too. On the other hand, signal measured by filtering, Wiener filtering and Fixed filtering methods such as
this method is characterized by a significant amount of Low Pass Filtering (LPF) and High Pass Filtering (HPF), [3],
overlapped undesired signals such as bioelectric potentials [19].
(maternal muscle activity, fetal movement activity, generated
potentials by respiration and stomach etc.), power line The drawback of the non-adaptive techniques is that they are
interference and mainly the component of the maternal heart time-invariant in nature, which has been overcome by the
activity [3], [4]. adaptive methods, which are more effective in reducing the

978-1-5090-2526-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

 2016 10th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP)
noise that is overlapping in time and frequency. Non-adaptive
methods are useful for data pre-processing or for noise
elimination in case of the classic ECG.
B. Adaptive methodologies
As mentioned before, an adaptive filter is a filter
characterised by an ability to self-adjust the filter coefficients
according to an optimized training algorithm which is driven by
a back propagated error signal. Adaptive filters are used in noise
cancelation to remove the noise adaptively from a signal and to
improve the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR).
Simply it is a technique for adaptive elimination of undesired
signals (such as the maternal component) from the abdominal
signal to obtain the fECG signal. The system can adjust and alter
to the existing circumstances, and optimize its results.
A theoretical multichannel adaptive noise cancelation
system shown in Fig. 2 illustrates an example of an adaptive
elicitation technique. It consists of two kinds of the input signals
recorded from multiple leads – the abdominal ECG signals
(AB1-ABn) and the thoracic ECG signals (TH1-THn). Each
abdominal signal consists of both maternal and fetal signals and
it is the primary input. The thoracic signal is considered to be
completely maternal and is used as the reference input. Finite
Impulse Response Filter weights of the adaptive systems are
updated by the training algorithms based on the back propagated
systems (more in [1], [6], [7], and [8]), genetic algorithms and
Bayesian adaptive filtering frame works which comprise
Kalman filters.
This paper focuses primarily on the Least Mean Squares
(LMS) based FIR Adaptive Filters methods. In the chapter
below there are mathematical descriptions of the most important
methods such as LMS, normative LMS (NLMS), BLMS and
DLMS.
III. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Least mean squares (LMS) algorithms are classified as
adaptive filters that can change the filter coefficients to become
a system that produces the least mean squares of the error signal
(the difference between the desired and the actual signal). It is a
stochastic gradient descent method in that the filter is only
adapted based on the error at the current time [9].
A. Standard LMS
The standard LMS algorithm performs the following operations
to update the coefficients of an adaptive filter:
x Calculates the output signal y(n) from the adaptive filter.
x Calculates the error signal e(n) by using the following
equation:
error signal, which is the desired fECG signal (fECG1-fECGn).  ( )= ( ) − ( ). 
The maternal component is considered to be an undesired signal x Updates the filter coefficients by using the following
for elimination. Each of the adaptive systems produces a signal
equation:
which is approximately the noise. This signal is subtracted with
the ECG signal so that the error signal that is back propagated to
the training algorithm is the fetal heart signal with some noise.
There are many different methodologies to obtain fECG
using adaptive filters by using one or several maternal reference
channels (as shown in Fig. 1). These methodologies include least
mean square (LMS) algorithms, recursive least square (RLS)
algorithms, artificial intelligence techniques, fuzzy inference
Fig. 2. A theoretical multichannel adaptive noise cancelation system
 ( + 1) = ( ) + 2 ( ) ( ), 
where μ is the step size of the adaptive filter, w(n) is the filter
coefficients vector, and x(n) is the filter input vector. Step size
is a crucial parameter that can improve the convergence speed
of the adaptive filter. It determines both how quickly and how
closely the adaptive filter converges to the filter solution,
>@>@
 2016 10th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP)

B. Normalized LMS (NLMS) to control the effectiveness of the fECG extraction - Percent
The normalized LMS (NLMS) algorithm is a modified form Root-Mean-Square Difference (PRD) and SNR.
of the standard LMS algorithm. The NLMS algorithm updates
the coefficients of an adaptive filter by using the following A. Percent Root-Mean-Square Difference (PRD)
equation: The PRD is one of the measure indexes commonly used in ECG
( ) compression literature ([8]) and it is determined by:
 ( + 1) = ( )+ ( )
‖ ( )‖
. 
2
∑ =1 ( )− ()
It is obvious that the NLMS algorithm is almost identical to
standard LMS algorithm except that the NLMS algorithm has a
time-varying step size μ(n), >@
C. Block LMS (BLMS)
The Block LMS Filter block implements an adaptive least-
mean-square (LMS) filter, where the adaptation of filter
weights occurs once for every block of samples. This algorithm
provides significant improvements in decreasing mean-squared
error (MSE) and consequently minimizing signal distortion.
Instead of updating the filter vector for every sample as for
the standard LMS in Eq. (1), the filter vector is updated once
every Lth sample
The weight update relation for BLMS algorithm is as
follows,
  = ∙ 100 
∑ =1 2 ()
where xorg denotes the original signal (ideal fECG) and xrec the
signal recovered by the algorithm.
The closer this value is to zero the similar are both signals.
The problem is the lack of an upper limit which makes it
difficult to compare figures from different pairs of signals, as it
depends on the amplitude of the signals. That is why the paper
also focuses on the other parameters to reach the optimal quality
of the extraction >@
B. Signal to noise ratio (SNR)
The relation between the signal and the noise is described
by SNR, whose expression is following:
 ( + 1) = ( ) + ∑ ( + ) ( + ), 
∑ ()
where the sample index n and block index k are related as:  SNRIN = 10∙ log  
∑ () ()

 = + .  where xorg denotes the original signal (ideal fECG) and xnoise the
This gives the filter output of BLMS algorithm in its final signal that is producing the undesired signal (mECG).
form as follows: ∑ ()
 SNROUT = 10∙ log  
 ( )= ( ) ( ). 
D. Delay LMS (DLMS)
The DLMS algorithm is extensively used in different
applications of adaptive filtering due to low computational
complexity and stability. The DLMS algorithm is introduced to
minimize the error between a given preferred signal and output
of the linear filter by adjusting recursively the parameters of a
linear filter. The weight update relation for DLMS algorithm is
as follows:
 ∑ () ()
where xorg denotes the original signal (ideal fECG) and xrec the
signal recovered by the algorithm.
The SNR quantifies the relation between the fetal signal and
the rest of the unwanted components (mECG). In the general
fECG inverse problem, this is not an operative definition of the
SNR, since it requires knowing the contribution of the fetal
signal and the noise. Since our signals are synthetic, this
information is available [13].
 ( ) ( − ) ( − ), 
C. Root mean square error (RMSE)
 ( ) ( − ) − ( − ),  The last parameter used in this paper is RMSE defined by
 ( + 1) ( ) + ( ) ( − ),  the following equation:

where D is the total delay inserted into the error feedback path  = ∑ − , 
of the LMS algorithm. If D = 0, then Eq. (7), Eq. (8) and
Eq. (9) represent the usual LMS adaptive algorithm. With the where sigorg denotes the original signal (ideal fECG) and sigrec
advantage of a higher throughput rate, the DLMS algorithm has the signal recovered by the algorithm.
the drawback of a slower convergence rate compared to the
LMS algorithm due to the inserted delay D. [11]  RMSE is a measure of the differences between values
predicted by a model or an estimator and the values observed.
IV. DEFINITION OF THE PARAMETERS The closer this value is to zero the more accurate is the system,
[14], [15].
The measurement of the quality of the fECG extraction
procedures is based on the estimation of the similarity of the
recovered signals and the ideal fECG signals and the absence
of the noise. There are two main parameters that can be helpful
 2016 10th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP)

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The authors’ goal is to provide results based on simulations
with LMS based FIR Adaptive Filters contained in MATLAB®
function ‘adaptfilt’. They suggest the ideal combination of the
chosen settings for these functions based on the results of
Percentage Root-Mean-Square Difference (PRD), input and
output Signal to Noise Ratios (SNRs), and Root Mean Square
Error (RMSE).
Fig. 3 shows synthetic signals used for the experiments. The
signals included synthetic distorted abdominal signal, which was
used as an input to the adaptive system and was created out of
the synthetic thoracic (mECG) and ideal abdominal (fECG)
signal using FIR filter.
Each adaptive filter is used to extract fECG. Results of fECG
extraction are assessed by the parameters introduced in the
previous section. The attention is focused mainly on the value of
the parameter PRD, which should be reduced as much as
possible while maintaining the value of the SNR positive. That
ensures that the output signal’s appearance is approaching the
ideal fECG and the amount of the noise remains smaller than the
signal. The parameter RMSE should be as close to zero as
possible.
Using MATLAB® the value of the step size (μ) was set to
0.1 and Adaptive filter length value (l), which is the number of
coefficients or taps, defaults to 10. That is, however, inadequate
in the case of fECG extraction.

For the first stage of the experiments, much more suitable

value of the filter length was chosen and remained constant
while the value of the step size altered. In the area where the
value of the PRD was the lowest, and the SNR was positive (the
filter is the most effective) the chosen values of the step size
altered minimally so reaching the ideal value would be possible.

Table I summarizes the results for each filter. DLMS and

BLMS filters optimal step sizes appear to be 0.0007 and for the
LMS filter 0.0006.

The values of the μ achieved in the previous step were

constant in the following step to find the ideal value of the filter
length. All the results are summarized in the Table II.

In Table III suggested setting for each filter based on the

Fig. 3. Synthetic signals used for the experiments.
The synthetic ideal fetal signal was then used as the reference
for the calculation of the performance parameters such as SNR,
PRD and RMSE. The value of the SNR before application of
any used adaptive filter was -11.559 dB,
results of the performance parameters can be seen. In the Fig. 4
– 7 there are the examples of the synthetic signal before and
after the application of each filter with the setting that was
evaluated as the most suitable. There are also the ideal fetal
signal and the distorted abdominal signal plotted for the visual
inspection of the quality of the results.

TABLE I. THE PARAMETERS OF THE QUALITY FOR EACH FILTER FOR THE DIFFERENT STEP SIZES

LMS DLMS BLMS

μ
(-) SNR PRD RMSE SNR PRD RMSE SNR PRD RMSE
(dB) (%) (-) (dB) (%) (-) (dB) (%) (-)
0.0001 -0.528 13.376 0.012 -0.53 13.393 0.012 -0.536 13.45 0.012
0.0004 -0.081 5.710 0.008 -0.085 5.737 0.008 -0.103 5.835 0.008
0.0005 -0.034 5.533 0.008 -0.039 5.566 0.008 -0.06 5.684 0.008
0.0006 0.003 5.533 0.008 -0.003 5.572 0.008 -0.026 5.713 0.008
0.0007 0.034 5.624 0.008 0.027 5.670 0.008 0.002 5.835 0.008
0.0008 0.061 5.765 0.008 0.053 5.817 0.008 0.026 6.008 0.008
0.0009 0.084 5.934 0.008 0.076 5.992 0.008 0.047 6.209 0.008
0.001 0.105 6.117 0.009 0.097 6.182 0.008 0.066 6.424 0.009
0.0011 0.124 6.308 0.009 0.116 6.378 0.009 0.083 6.645 0.009
0.01 0.673 15.725 0.013 0.65 15.935 0.014 0.292 22.366 0.016
 2016 10th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP)

TABLE II. THE PARAMETERS OF THE QUALITY FOR EACH FILTER FOR DIFFERENT FILTER LENGTH
LMS NLMS DLMS BLMS
Filter length μ=0.0006 offset=10, step=0.1 μ=0.0007 μ=0.0007
(-) SNR PRD Time SNR PRD Time SNR PRD Time SNR PRD Time
(dB) (%) (s) (dB) (%) (s) (dB) (%) (s) (dB) (%) (s)
1 -6.178 305.856 7.422 -5.995 291.558 13.123 -6.149 303.332 6.954 -6.153 303.674 0.934

5 -5.262 230.978 8.245 -4.185 163.086 9.211 -5.215 227.617 8.810 -5.234 228.879 1.082

10 -3.234 108.863 8.224 -1.374 42.68 9.176 -3.051 100.552 8.747 -3.076 101.452 1.133

15 -1.415 38.98 8.140 -0.491 20.756 9.192 -1.292 35.546 8.815 -1.321 36.1 1.168

20 -0.58 16.592 8.302 -0.051 12.805 9.341 -0.522 15.594 8.822 -0.551 15.975 1.297

25 -0.184 8.362 8.325 0.193 9.696 9.461 -0.15 8.149 8.839 -0.176 8.381 I.36

30 0.003 5.533 8.292 0.302 9.316 9.321 0.027 5.670 9.340 0.002 5.835 1.375

35 0.077 5.199 8.414 0.348 9.984 9.417 0.096 5.511 8.871 0.069 5.695 1.337

40 0.103 5.703 8.325 0.379 10.753 9.342 0.121 6.075 8.888 0.09 6.306 1.334

50 0.133 6.562 8.511 0.441 12.099 9.379 0.152 6.969 9.098 0.116 7.264 1.442

75 0.206 8.140 8.568 0.58 15.198 9.479 0.229 8.714 9.179 0.182 9.120 1.679

100 0.282 9.748 8.661 0.696 18.138 9.659 0.308 10.458 9.610 0.252 10.957 1.869

150 0.433 13.063 8.759 0.924 22.966 9.858 0.468 14.043 9.442 0.396 14.785 2.345

200 0.557 15.459 9.725 1.103 27.077 10.727 0.593 16.581 10.803 0.505 17.466 2.859

The results had shown successful reduction of the undesired

signals. All of the performance parameters had been improved
after the application of the adaptive filters. All of the filters’
best results (according to the values of the parameters PRD,
SNR and RMSE) appeared with the value of filter length in
interval 30-35 and the filter step size 0.0006-0.0007.

TABLE III. OPTIMAL VALUES OF THE PARAMETERS

Parameters
Filter
Step Length
LMS 0.0006 30

NLMS - 35

DLMS 0.0007 30 Fig. 4. Adaptive filter BLMS

BLMS 0.0007 30

The worst results belong to the NLMS filter. It also has the
negative of a very low filtering speed. The BLMS filter
outperforms the other filters. The filtering speed is incomparably
faster with the same quality of the output signal.

Fig. 5. Adaptive filter DLMS

 2016 10th International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP)
Fig. 6. Adaptive filter LMS
Fig. 7. Adaptive filter NLMS
VI. CONCLUSION
The authors’ suggest further research in this field. There is
a need to test other algorithms and more suitable synthetic data
should be used. On the other hand, there is also need for the
tests with real data. The problem is the lack of real data
available for the public use. There is an existing cooperation
between the authors and a hospital on creating a database of the
real data that can be used for experiments in the future. The
Generators introduced by authors in [16] and [17] is also a
solution for this problem.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper has been elaborated in the framework of the
project SP2016/146 and SP2016/162 of Student Grant System,
VSB-TU Ostrava.
REFERENCES
[1] Jezewski, Janusz, et al. "Determination of fetal heart rate from abdominal
signals: evaluation of beat-to-beat accuracy in relation to the direct fetal
electrocardiogram." Biomedizinische Technik/Biomedical Engineering
57.5 (2012): 383-394.
[2] Jezewski, Janusz, Tomasz Kupka, and Krzysztof Horoba. "Extraction of
fetal heart-rate signal as the time event series from evenly sampled data
acquired using Doppler ultrasound technique." Biomedical Engineering,
IEEE Transactions on 55.2 (2008): 805-810.
[3] Jagannath, D. J., and A. Immanuel Selvakumar. "Issues and research on
foetal electrocardiogram signal elicitation." Biomedical signal processing
and control 10 (2014): 224-244.
[4] Agostinelli, Angela, et al. "Noninvasive fetal electrocardiography: an
overview of the signal electrophysiological meaning, recording
procedures, and processing techniques." Annals of Noninvasive
Electrocardiology 20.4 (2015): 303-313.
[5] Jezewski, Janusz, Janusz Wrobel, and Krzysztof Horoba. "Comparison of
Doppler ultrasound and direct electrocardiography acquisition techniques
for quantification of fetal heart rate variability." IEEE Transactions on
Biomedical Engineering BME, 53.5 (2006): 855.
[6] Martinek, Radek, et al. "Enhanced processing and analysis of multi-
channel non-invasive abdominal foetal ECG signals during labor and
delivery." Electronics Letters 51.22 (2015): 1744-1746.
[7] Martinek, Radek, and Jan Zidek. "Refining the diagnostic quality of the
abdominal fetal electrocardiogram using the techniques of artificial
intelligence." Journal: Przeglad Elektrotchniczny (Electrical Review)
88.12B (2012): 155-160.
[8] Martinek, Radek, and Jan Zidek. "A system for improving the diagnostic
quality of fetal electrocardiogram." Journal: Przeglad Elektrotchniczny
(Electrical Review), R 88 (2012): 164-173.
[9] Alexander, Thomas S. Adaptive signal processing: theory and
applications. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.
[10] Least Mean Square (LMS) Adaptive Filter - Developer Zone - National
Instruments." National Instruments. N.p., 10 June 2009. Web. 26 Feb.
2016.
[11] Mahfuz, Ejaz, Chunyan Wang, and M. Omair Ahmad. "A high-
throughput DLMS adaptive algorithm." Circuits and Systems, 2005.
ISCAS 2005. IEEE International Symposium on. IEEE, 2005.
[12] Jalaleddine, Sateh, et al. "ECG data compression techniques-a unified
approach." Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on 37.4 (1990):
329-343.
[13] Martinez, M., et al. "Methods to evaluate the performance of fetal
electrocardiogram extraction algorithms." Computers in Cardiology 2001.
IEEE, 2001.
[14] Wen, He, et al. "Comparative Study of Influence of Noise on Power
Frequency Estimation of Sine wave Using Interpolation FFT."
Fluctuation and Noise Letters 13.03 (2014): 1450019.
[15] Wen, He, Zhaosheng Teng, and Siyu Guo. "Triangular self-convolution
window with desirable sidelobe behaviors for harmonic analysis of power
system." Instrumentation and Measurement, IEEE Transactions on 59.3
(2010): 543-552.
[16] Martinek, Radek, et al. "Virtual simulator for the generation of patho-
physiological foetal ECGs during the prenatal period." Electronics Letters
51.22 (2015): 1738-1740.
[17] Martinek, Radek, et al. "A novel LabVIEW-based multi-channel non-
invasive abdominal maternal-fetal electrocardiogram signal generator."
Physiological Measurement 37.2 (2016): 238.
[18] Martinek, Radek, et al. "Modelling of Fetal Hypoxic Conditions Based on
Virtual Instrumentation." Proceedings of the Second International Afro-
European Conference for Industrial Advancement AECIA 2015. Springer
International Publishing, 2016.
[19] Martinek, Radek, et al. "A Robust Approach For Acoustic Noise
Suppression In Speech Using ANFIS." Journal of Electrical Engineering
66.6 (2015): 301-310.