Patent ID: 7532923

Claim:
An apparatus for detecting the heart rate of a fetus, the apparatus comprising: at least two detectors to detect heart beats of the fetus, each detector including at least two electrodes, adapted to be placed on an abdomen of a mother of the fetus, configured to detect ECG signals; and a processor, coupled to the detectors, adapted to determine a heart rate of the fetus by only processing the ECG signals received from the at least two electrodes of each detector, the processor including means for detecting heart beats of the mother by determining when the ECG signals reach a maximum, and means for determining a heart rate of the mother by determining a time interval between adjacent heart beats, so as to determine the heart rate of the mother using only the processed ECG signals, wherein the processor generates virtual ECG signals as a weighted sum of the ECG signals detected by the detectors, the virtual ECG signals representing the ECG signals that would have been obtained from a virtual detector positioned at a virtual location on the abdomen of the mother.