In this work we highlight a methodology that extracts sources from noisy single-channel abdominal phonograms. First, an appropriate matrix of delays is constructed. Next, multiple independent components are calculated using the FastICA algorithm. Then these components are projected back to the measurement space and classified for recovering the sources of interest. Single-channel phonograms obtained from three different subjects were analysed. Results show successful extraction of foetal heart sounds (FHS), maternal respiration/pulse wave, and line noise. It is important to point out the high performance of the method for extracting the former two as separate sources; especially due to the fact that pulse wave and FHS may overlap as maternal and foetal QRSs do in the abdominal ECG. The most outstanding factor is that this is achieved using a single-channel method. So, this approach extracts physiological sources from noisy abdominal phonograms, and we believe it will be useful for surveillance, not only for foetal well-being but also for maternal condition.

The demographic profiles of patients with TSCI and NTSCI differ in terms of proportion of total SCIs, patient age, male:female ratio and incomplete vs complete injury. The most common etiology of TSCI was motor vehicle accidents (43.4%), and neurological lesions were complete in 62.7% of patients. The most common etiology of NTSCI was tumoral spinal lesions (57.4%), and lesions were incomplete in 75.8% of patients.

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