Patent ID: 7869863

Claim:
An automated method of monitoring the fetal electrocardiographic waveform of a fetus in a pregnant mother to extract a high quality fetal signal from an abundance of signal channels, said method comprising: a) measuring, in real-time, biopotential waveforms indicative of either one of a maternal heart or a maternal heart beat and a fetal heart beat; b) isolating a single biopotential waveform from among said measured biopotential waveforms for use as a reference fetal waveform; c) enhancing the isolated reference fetal waveform to remove correlated noise; d) monitoring the enhanced isolated reference fetal waveform in real-time via at least one fetal monitoring algorithm; e) monitoring an output quality metric via at least one quality metric monitoring algorithm to determine if it is within an acceptable range; and f) dynamically adjusting at least one processing parameter of the at least one fetal monitoring algorithm to maintain the output quality metric within said acceptable range.