Comparison between Embroidered and Gel Electrodes on ECG-Derived Respiration Rate.

Respiratory rate (RR), which is an essential observation for prediagnosis, can be obtained indirectly from the electrocardiogram (ECG), the so-called ECG-derived respiration (EDR). In this paper, we compared embroidered electrodes with gel electrodes on their performance in capturing EDR signals and analysed which frequency feature best estimates RR. Data were collected from 9 healthy subjects. Results reveal that (1) embroidered electrodes performed similarly to gel electrodes (P = 0.077), (2) using the median frequency of the obtained EDR signals is significantly better (P = 0.01) than the counting methods in the time domain. The obtained results are relevant for the future development of textile-based sensors.