Apparatuses for tracking physiological parameters of mother and fetus during pregnancy

Abstract

The invention provides systems and methods for monitoring the wellbeing of a fetus by the non-invasive detection and analysis of fetal cardiac electrical activity data.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method, comprising:
 receiving, by at least one computer processor, electrocardiogram (ECG) signals data from at least one pair of ECG sensors positioned on an abdomen of a woman carrying a fetus;   filtering, by the at least one computer processor, the ECG signals data to form filtered ECG signals data;   detecting, by the at least one computer processor, maternal heart peaks in the filtered ECG signals data, the maternal heart peaks forming a maternal ECG signal;   subtracting, from the filtered ECG signals data, by the at least one computer processor, the maternal ECG signal by using a non-linear subtraction procedure to form corrected ECG signals data;   extracting, by the at least one computer processor, raw fetal ECG signals data from the filtered N-ECG signals data from the corrected ECG signals data;   processing, by the at least one computer processor, the raw fetal ECG signals data to improve a signal-to-noise ratio of the raw fetal ECG signals data to form filtered fetal ECG signals data;   detecting, by the at least one computer processor, fetal heart peaks in the filtered fetal ECG signals data;   calculating, by the at least one computer processor, based on the detected fetal heart peaks, at least one of:
 i) a fetal heart rate, 
 ii) a fetal heart curve, 
 iii) a beat-2-beat fetal heart rate, or, 
 iv) fetal heart rate variability; and 
   outputting, by the at least one computer processor, a result of the calculating step.