Patent Document ID: 20170007142
Application ID: 15205620
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer-implemented method, wherein the method determines the health of a fetus, wherein the method comprises: receiving, by at least one computer processor executing specific programmable instructions configured for the method, raw Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals data from at least one pair of ECG sensors; wherein the at least one pair of ECG sensors are positioned in on an abdomen of a woman carrying a fetus; wherein the raw ECG signals data comprise data representative of a N number of raw ECG signals (raw N-ECG signals data) which are being acquired in real-time from the at least one pair of ECG sensors; digital signal filtering, by the at least one computer processor, the raw N-ECG signals data to form filtered N-ECG signals data having filtered N-ECG signals; detecting, by the at least one computer processor, maternal heart peaks in each filtered ECG signal in the filtered N-ECG signals data; subtracting, by the at least one computer processor, from each of N-ECG signal of the filtered N-ECG signals data, maternal ECG signal, by utilizing at least one non-linear subtraction procedure to obtain corrected ECG signals data which comprise data representative of a N number of corrected ECG signals, wherein the at least one non-linear subtraction procedure comprises: iteratively performing: i) automatically dividing each ECG signal of N-ECG signals of the filtered N-ECG signals data into a plurality of ECG signal segments, 1) wherein each ECG signal segment of the plurality of ECG signal segments corresponds to a beat interval of a full heartbeat, and 2) wherein each beat interval is automatically determined based, at least in part on automatically detecting an onset value and an offset value of such beat interval; ii) automatically modifying each of the second plurality of filtered N-ECG signal segments to form a plurality of modified filtered N-ECG signal segments, wherein the modifying is performed using at least one inverse optimization scheme based on a set of parameters, wherein values of the set of parameters is determined based on: iteratively performing: 1) defining a global template based on a standard heartbeat profile of an adult human being, 2) setting a set of tentative values for a local template for each filtered N-ECG signal segment, 3) utilizing at least one optimization scheme to determine an adaptive template for each filtered N-ECG signal segment based on the local template being matched to the global template within a pre-determined similarity value; and iii) automatically eliminating the modified segments from each of the filtered N-ECG signals, by subtracting the adaptive template from the filtered N-ECG signal thereby generating each corrected ECG signal; extracting, by the at least one computer processor, raw fetal ECG signals data from the filtered N-ECG signals data based on the corrected ECG signals data, wherein the raw fetal ECG signals data comprises a N number of fetal ECG signals (raw N-ECG fetal signals data); processing, by the at least one computer processor, the raw N-ECG fetal signals data to improve a signal-to-noise ratio of the raw N-ECG fetal signals to form filtered N-ECG fetal signals data; detecting, by the at least one computer processor, fetal heart peaks in the filtered N-ECG fetal signals data; calculating, by the at least one computer processor, based on 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, wherein the result of the calculating step is used to determine the health of the fetus.