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Procedia Engineering 30 (2012) 356 363

Procedia
Engineering
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

International Conference on Communication Technology and System Design 2011

Separation Of Maternal And Fetal ECG Signals From The

Mixed Source Signal Using FASTICA
Jasper Raj Immanuel.Ja, Prabhu.Va, Jane Christopheraj.Va, Sugumar.Da,
Dr.Vanathi. P.T.b, a*
a

Karunya University,Coimbatore- 641114,India

b
PSG Tech,Coimbatore,India

Abstract
In this paper it is proposed to separate the ECG signal taken from skin electrodes located on a pregnant womans
body into Maternal Electro Cardiogram signal and Fetal Electro Cardiogram signal. Blind Source Separation is the
technique used for separating these source signals. ICA is applied on the mixed signals and the separated signals are
reconstructed using wavelet reconstruction. Comparison results show that Lifting Wavelet Transformation and
FASTICA algorithm produces the best SNR value of 11.39 for maternal and 10.10 for fetal Electro Cardio Gram
signals.

2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICCTSD 2011
Keywords: Blind Source Separation; Independent Component Analysis; Lifting wavelet transformation; FASTICA; SNR.

1.

Introduction

ECG signal is the record of electrical activity of the heart that results when the heart muscle cells
in atria and ventricles contract. ECG is a non stationary signal and composed of Atrial depolarization (P
wave), ventricular depolarization (QRS complex) and repolarization of the ventricles (T wave).The FECG
signal is comparatively weak in amplitude (less than 20% of the mothers ECG) [1] and often mixed with
noise. The Fetal Heart Rate (FHR) lies in the range from 1.3 to 3.5 Hz [1] and sometimes it is possible for
the maternal and some of the fetal ECG signals to be closely overlapping. So far, research and extensive
works have been made in this area, developing better algorithms, upgrading existing methodologies, and
improving detection techniques to reduce noise and acquire accurate FECG signals.
_____________________

_Jasper Raj Immanuel. Tel.: +919965563252.

E-mail address: jas.immanuel2008@gmail.com

1877-7058 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2012.01.872

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Wavelet transform is well fitting to non stationary signals like ECG. The combination of wavelet analysis
and BSS methods. also shows potential attitude for the separation of the maternal and fetal signals from
ECG [1]. Blind adaptive-filtering tactic overcomes the theoretical limitations in applying conventional
BSS methods based on ICA for FECG signal extraction problem.
In this regard different ECG databases were collected from San Joe hospital, Perumbavoor, Kerala, CSI
Mission Hospital, Neyyoor , James hospital, Nagercoil and some were also collected from MIT and
physionet websites [15] which were in digital format.

Fig. 1. ECG signal 1

Fig. 2. ECG signal 2

hese signals were scanned and converted to jpeg format as images, which were then read by MATLAB
and converted into a one dimensional format to be used in the algorithm.
2.

Methodology

This graphical image is read and then converted into binary format and finally it is scanned and
mapped to two-dimensional format. This signal is then preprocessed using Wavelet transform to remove
noise. It is then decomposed to time-frequency domain using Wavelet Lifting decomposition. The noisy
FECG signal is decomposed to five levels of wavelet transform by using the daubechies wavelet (db4)
[2]. The fetal and maternal signals are then separated by applying FAST ICA algorithm to the
decomposed signal. The separated signals are finally reconstructed using the Inverse Wavelet Lifting
Transform.

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INFORMATION SOURCE

INFORMATION SOURCE
INFORMATION TO SIGNAL MAPPING

DENOISING USING WAVELET

(PREPROCESSING)
WAVELET LIFTING DECOMPOSITION

APPLYING FAST ICA

ALGORITHM

WAVELET RECONSTRUCTION 1

MATERNAL ECG

WAVELET RECONSTRUCTION 2

FETAL ECG

Fig. 3. Flow Chart

2.1 Preprocessing
First step in separation algorithm is to remove the noise (due to graph to signal conversion process) from
the input ECG signal [2],[6]. In this case wavelet denoising technique is used.

Fig.4. Denoising

The general wavelet denoising procedure is as follows,

Wavelet transform is applied for input ECG signal to generate noisy wavelet coefficients to the
level where PD occurrence can be distinguished.
Appropriate threshold limit is estimated at each level and threshold method (hard or soft
thresholding) to remove the noises is applied [7], [8].
Finally Inverse wavelet transform is performed to obtain denoised signal.

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In case of noisy FECG signal, it is decomposed to five levels of wavelet transform by using daubechies
wavelet. The transform consists of a set of high pass and low pass filters in the input stage and the same
number in output stage. One factor that affects the number of levels that can be reached to achieve the
satisfactory noise removal result is signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the original signal.
The threshold values are calculated at each decomposition level using the formula,
(1)
3.

Wavelet Decomposition

In this technique of separation wavelet decomposition is done by using Lifting Wavelet

Transform (LWT). These properties are very well satisfied in Lifting Wavelet Transformation (LWT)
than in Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT). The principle of lifting is to generate a new one from a
given orthogonal quadruplet by applying a finite sequence of primal or dual elementary lifting steps
(ELS).

Even samples

High frequency component

Split

Input signal

Dual Lifting

Primal Lifting

Low frequency component

Odd samples

Fig. 5. Forward Wavelet Lifting Scheme

From the Fig. 5 it can be inferred that the input is divided into even and odd stream, followed by lifting
one of the streams by applying Laurent polynomial to other and adding it to the first.The lifting theorem
now states that any other finite filter gnew complementary to h is of the form,
gnew(z) = g(z) + h(z)s(z2)
h
4.

new

(z) = h(z) + g(z)t(z )

(2)
(3)

Independent Component Analysis

ICA is a signal processing technique that has demonstrated the ability of separating independent
sources from mixed recorded signals [3]. The input signal is acquired from Magnetocardiography (MCG),
a technique that allows the non-invasive detection of the extremely low magnetic field variations
associated to the spontaneous electrical activity of the human heart. The Fetal Magnetocardiography
(FMCG) contains electrical activity of both the fetal and maternal hearts, since both are included in the
same space volume, i.e. in the maternal abdomen. The ICA problem is rather complex in the case of
FECG because
Both signals are quasi periodic and have a similar waveform.
The fetal and maternal cardiac signals are characterized by different values of frequency(fetal
heart rate is greater than maternal) and intensity(the strength of maternal heart is greater than the
fetus).

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In FMCG some weak fetal bats may be hidden behind the more intense maternal beats and heart
rate is not perfectly constant.
To use non - gaussianity in ICA estimation, we must have a quantitative measure of non gaussianity of a
random variable such as Mean, Kurtosis [12], Standard deviation, Negentropy [12].
ICA is a statistical method that searches from multivariate statistical data for underlying factors or
components that are independent [4]. The recorded data is a linear superposition of n different sources of
the form,
X = A*S,
(4)
A-Mixing Matrix, S-Source Matrix.
The goal of ICA is to find a Separating Matrix W, which is as close to A-1 as possible, based upon
proper statistical criteria in order to optimally recover the original source signal,
y(t) =W*x(t)=W*A*S(t)=S(t)

(5)

4.1. FASTICA
The basic concept of Fast ICA is to take a neural network leaning rule and convert it into a fixedpoint iteration. This yields an algorithm that is very simple, does not depend on any user-defined
parameters and is fast to converge to the most accurate solution allowed by the data. The FASTICA
require 10 % of the floating point operations used by the neural algorithm [14],[5].
4.2. Fixed point FASTICA
In order to obtain something that could be implemented in hardware or hardware-software
systems, it is necessary to have any algorithm that can work with purely fixed point numbers [14]. The
algorithm to satisfy this requirement is developed in MATLAB. The data was converted to double for
input to both whitening and PCA, and the output whitened data was converted to the same 16 bit numbers
as above before input to the ICA algorithm [10]. This involved several multiplication and additions of
arrays of numbers. Typically normalization requires taking square root and division which done by
existing methods for fast square root algorithm of integers and division could also implemented by an
embedded CPU.
4.3. ERICA
ERICA known as equivariant robust independent component analysis is one of the FASTICA
technique which is being used here to implement separation. The ERICA algorithm can be applied to both
real valued and complex-valued data. The term equivariance implies that the variance of both the original
and the reconstructed signal has to be similar.
5. Reconstruction
In the inverse transform, upsampling is to be done after which filtering is performed [3]. The
drawback of this method is that the filter will perform a lot of multiplications by zero. Inorder to
overcome this, upsampler is added behind the filters. In the inverse lifting transform it is possible to undo
this lifting step by again applying the same Laurent polynomial to the other stream and then subtract it
from the first. In this case low pass sub band is lifted first with the help of high pass sub band, called as
primal lifting. The high pass sub band is then lifted with the help of low pass sub band, called as dual
lifting. Reconstructed signal is taken out from switch as shown in fig.6,

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High frequency
component
Primal Lifting

Dual Lifting

Low frequency
component
Fig. 6. Inverse Lifting Wavelet Transform.

6. Result
6.1. Gaussianity Test
Table 1. Parameters for gaussianity.
PARAMETER

SIGNAL 1

SIGNAL 2

MEAN

43.7941

-137.17
69.414
11.4052
1.371
1.6315
NON GAUSSIAN

S.D.

116.91

KURTOSIS

3.3246

SKEWNESS

0.5509

NEGENTROPY

2.4324

RESULT

NON GAUSSIAN

6.2. SNR for various algorithm

Table 2. SNR for Fetal ECG.

ALGORITHM

SIGNAL 1

SIGNAL 2

ICA

1.8

11.32

FIXED POINT ICA

8.68

9.32

ERICA

7.78

11.98

FAST ICA

10.10

18.3

Switch

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Table 3. SNR for Maternal ECG.

ALGORITHM

SIGNAL 1

SIGNAL 2

ICA

10.00

9.39

FIXED POINT ICA

ERICA

10.06

11.09

FAST ICA

11.39

11.76

Fig. 7. Separated signals by ICA.

Fig. 8. Separated signals by ERICA.

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Fig. 9. Separated signals by FASTICA.

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[4]
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[6]
[7]
[8]
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[10]
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[14]
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