Non-Invasive Fetal ECG Database

@article{pollard_physionet_2026, title = {{PhysioNet} as a global platform for biomedical research}, volume = {1}, issn = {3005-0693}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s44360-026-00096-z}, doi = {10.1038/s44360-026-00096-z}, abstract = {Twenty-five years after its first public repository was established, the PhysioNet resource for biomedical and clinical data has enabled tens of thousands of research papers. Further efforts are ongoing to advance secure data sharing, community engagement and scalable research infrastructure.}, number = {8}, journal = {Nature Health}, author = {Pollard, Tom and Moody, Benjamin E. and Lehman, Li-wei H. and Gow, Brian J. and Fernandes, Chrystinne and Xie, Chen and Johnson, Alistair and Mark, Roger G. and Heldt, Thomas}, month = aug, year = {2026}, pages = {792--795},}

Abstract

This database contains a series of 55 multichannel abdominal non-invasive fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) recordings, taken from a single subject between 21 to 40 weeks of pregnancy. The records have variable durations, and were taken weekly (two or more records were acquired during some weeks). These records may be very useful for testing signal separation algorithms.

The FECGs in this collection were amplified using a g.BSamp Biosignal Amplifier. The data have been stored in EDF/EDF+ format.

Recording information

• 2 thoracic signals
• 3 or 4 abdominal signals (most records include 4).
• Electrode positioning was varied in order to improve SNR.
• The analog amplifier also includes a 50Hz notch filter switched ON.
• Ag-AgCl transducer.
• Bandwidth: 0.01Hz-100Hz (synchronous sampling of all signals)
• Sampling rate: 1kHz.
• Resolution: 16 bits.
• Gains and input ranges are included in the records in EDF format.
• Patient Identification contains the gestational age. The format is week+day.

Contributors

The database was prepared for PhysioNet by:

Marcelino Martinez Sober, PhD (email: marcelino.martinez at uv dot es)
Jorge Granado Marco
Digital Signal Processing Group (GPDS)
Electronics Engineering Department
ETSE Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería
Universitat de València
C/ Dr. Moliner, 50, 46100 Burjassot (Valencia) Spain

Cited by

3 publications cite this project. The most recent are listed below.

• An End-to-End RoI-Based Encoder-Decoder for Fetal ECG Recovery and QRS Complex Detection
  Julia C. Remus, Thiago L. T. da Silveira. IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2024.
• Null Space Component Analysis of One-Shot Single-Channel Source Separation Problem
  Wen-Liang Hwang, Jinn Ho. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2021.
• Non-Adaptive Methods for Fetal ECG Signal Processing: A Review and Appraisal
  René Jaroš, Radek Martínek, Radana Vilimkova Kahankova. Sensors, 2018.

View all 3 publications

Citation data from OpenAlex. Papers that use the project without citing it may be missing.