In some embodiments, techniques capable of obtaining high-quality fetal ECG (fECG) information using as few as two composite (maternal and fetal) maternal abdominal ECG (aECG) signals to derive the fetal ECG information are provided. In some embodiments, maternal ECG information and fetal ECG information are both obtained from the aECG signals, and are either presented or stored. The techniques may use novel proposed diffusion-based channel selection criteria. To validate the proposed techniques, analysis results of two publicly available databases are described, and compared with other available techniques in the literature.