The MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University, Milperra NSW 2560, Australia.
School of Engineering, Western Sydney University, Penrith NSW 2751, Australia.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Mar 12;20(6):1583. doi: 10.3390/s20061583.
The comfortable, continuous monitoring of vital parameters is still a challenge. The long-term measurement of respiration and cardiovascular signals is required to diagnose cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Similarly, sleep quality assessment and the recovery period following acute treatments require long-term vital parameter datalogging. To address these requirements, we have developed "VitalCore", a wearable continuous vital parameter monitoring device in the form of a T-shirt targeting the uninterrupted monitoring of respiration, pulse, and actigraphy. VitalCore uses polymer-based stretchable resistive bands as the primary sensor to capture breathing and pulse patterns from chest expansion. The carbon black-impregnated polymer is implemented in a U-shaped configuration and attached to the T-shirt with "interfacing" material along with the accompanying electronics. In this paper, VitalCore is bench tested and compared to gold standard respiration and pulse measurements to verify its functionality and further to assess the quality of data captured during sleep and during light exercise (walking). We show that these polymer-based sensors could identify respiratory peaks with a sensitivity of 99.44%, precision of 96.23%, and false-negative rate of 0.557% during sleep. We also show that this T-shirt configuration allows the wearer to sleep in all sleeping positions with a negligible difference of data quality. The device was also able to capture breathing during gait with 88.9%-100% accuracy in respiratory peak detection.
舒适、连续的生命参数监测仍然是一个挑战。需要长期测量呼吸和心血管信号，以诊断心血管和呼吸系统疾病。同样，睡眠质量评估和急性治疗后的恢复阶段也需要长期的生命参数数据记录。为了满足这些需求，我们开发了“VitalCore”，这是一种可穿戴的连续生命参数监测设备，采用 T 恤形式，可实现呼吸、脉搏和动作的不间断监测。VitalCore 使用基于聚合物的可拉伸电阻带作为主要传感器，从胸部扩张中捕捉呼吸和脉搏模式。这种碳黑浸渍聚合物采用 U 形配置，并与配套的电子设备一起，通过“界面”材料附着在 T 恤上。在本文中，我们对 VitalCore 进行了台架测试，并将其与金标准呼吸和脉搏测量进行了比较，以验证其功能，并进一步评估在睡眠和轻度运动（步行）期间捕获的数据质量。我们表明，这些基于聚合物的传感器可以在睡眠期间以 99.44%的灵敏度、96.23%的精度和 0.557%的假阴性率识别呼吸峰值。我们还表明，这种 T 恤配置允许佩戴者以所有睡姿入睡，数据质量差异可以忽略不计。该设备还能够在步态中以 88.9%-100%的呼吸峰值检测准确性捕捉呼吸。
