Simultaneous fetal magnetocardiography and ultrasound/Doppler imaging

The difficulty of utilizing multimodality diagnostic imaging techniques for fetal surveillance remains one of the greatest challenges in providing enhanced prenatal care. In this Letter we demonstrate the feasibility of performing fetal magnetocardiography (fMCG) and ultrasound/Doppler imaging simultaneously, using a multichannel SQUID magnetometer and a portable ultrasound scanner. Despite large magnetic interference from the scanner, the implementation of simple noise reduction procedures and appropriate signal processing techniques yielded fMCG recordings of sufficient quality for assessment of fetal heart rate and rhythm. A variation of reference channel filtering, referred to here as synthetic reference channel filtering, was used to reduce nonstationary low-frequency interference. The combination of fMCG and/or fMEG with ultrasound/Doppler offers new possibilities for assessment of fetal well-being and fetal cardiac function.