**2.6.1 Data collection**

Data was obtained from pregnant women at various stages of gestation (Zgallai, 2007). This was achieved, with the consent of women, using a pair of electrodes, Sonicaid 8000, a Pentium IV PC and an interface card. The software used for the attractor calculations was MATLAB 8.0. Ag-AgCl Beckman electrodes of 8 cm in diameter, and 25-cm spaced centres were positioned on the abdominal wall after careful preparation of the skin, which lowers the interelectrode impedance of 10 k. The electrode pair is set over the umbilicus, and lined up with the median vertical axis of the uterus. The ground electrode is located on the woman's hip. The training data involves using third-order cumulants and their slices of segments of fetal scalp electrode measurement. These are used to compare with results obtained from the transabdominal ECG recording. The testing data is the transabdominal ECG recording.
