Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications (DIET), Sapienza University of Rome, via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy.
Department of Legal and Economic Sciences, Pegaso University, via di S. Pantaleo 66, 00186 Rome, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Aug 12;20(16):4500. doi: 10.3390/s20164500.
Unobtrusive and continuous monitoring of vital signs is becoming more and more important both for patient monitoring in the home environment and for sports activity tracking. Even though many gadgets and clinical systems exist, the need for simple, low-cost and easily applicable solutions still remains, especially in view of a more widespread use within everyone's reach. The paper presents a fully wearable and wireless sensorized belt, suitable to simultaneously acquire respiratory and cardiac signals employing a single acquisition channel. The adopted method relies on a 50-kHz current injected in the subject thorax through a couple of textile electrodes and on envelope detection of the trans-thoracic voltage acquired from a couple of different embedded electrodes. The resulting signal contains both the baseband electrocardiogram (ECG) signal and the trans-thoracic impedance signal, which encodes respiratory acts. The two signals can be easily separated through suitable filtering and the cardio-respiratory rates extracted. The proposed solution yields performances comparable to those of a spirometer and a two-lead ECG. The whole system, with a realization cost below 100 €, a wireless interface, and several hours (or even days) of autonomy, is a suitable candidate for everyday use, especially if complemented by motion artifact removal techniques, currently under implementation.
非侵入式和连续的生命体征监测对于家庭环境中的患者监测和运动活动跟踪变得越来越重要。尽管存在许多小工具和临床系统，但仍然需要简单、低成本和易于应用的解决方案，特别是考虑到更广泛地普及到每个人都能使用的程度。本文提出了一种完全可穿戴和无线传感器带，适用于通过单个采集通道同时采集呼吸和心脏信号。所采用的方法依赖于通过一对纺织电极将 50-kHz 电流注入受试者胸部，并从几个不同的嵌入式电极采集胸电压的包络检测。所得信号包含基带心电图 (ECG) 信号和编码呼吸动作的胸阻抗信号。这两个信号可以通过合适的滤波轻松分离，并提取心呼吸率。所提出的解决方案可与肺活量计和双导联心电图的性能相媲美。整个系统的实现成本低于 100 欧元，具有无线接口，并且具有几个小时（甚至几天）的自主权，是日常使用的合适候选方案，特别是如果辅以正在实施的运动伪影去除技术。
