A Non-Invasive Method for Extraction of Fetal Heart Sound Signals using a Statistical Tool

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel approach to analyze and process the fetal heart sound signals (FHS). The proposed enhanced method extracts fetal heartbeat signals from the signal recorded by placing the mics on the mother?s womb. The signals collected are processed by signal processing approach based on Blind Source Separation (BSS) technique. The approach shows that ICA can be efficiently used as a statistical tool for Blind Source Separation (BSS) and to process acoustic phonocardiograph. The experimental results obtained by the proposed technique are encouraging and shows the accurate extraction of the fetal heart sound signals. The output of the proposed method can be further used to analyze the heart rate of the fetus.