Unit of Electronics for Sensor Systems, Department of Engineering, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, 00128 Rome, Italy.
Unit of Electronics for Sensor Systems, Department of Science and Technology for Humans and the Environment, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, 00128 Rome, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2021 Apr 15;21(8):2777. doi: 10.3390/s21082777.
The use of wearable sensors for health monitoring is rapidly growing. Over the past decade, wearable technology has gained much attention from the tech industry for commercial reasons and the interest of researchers and clinicians for reasons related to its potential benefit on patients' health. Wearable devices use advanced and specialized sensors able to monitor not only activity parameters, such as heart rate or step count, but also physiological parameters, such as heart electrical activity or blood pressure. Electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring is becoming one of the most attractive health-related features of modern smartwatches, and, because cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of death globally, the use of a smartwatch to monitor patients could greatly impact the disease outcomes on health care systems. Commercial wearable devices are able to record just single-lead ECG using a couple of metallic contact dry electrodes. This kind of measurement can be used only for arrhythmia diagnosis. For the diagnosis of other cardiac disorders, additional ECG leads are required. In this study, we characterized an electronic interface to be used with multiple contactless capacitive electrodes in order to develop a wearable ECG device able to perform several lead measurements. We verified the ability of the electronic interface to amplify differential biopotentials and to reject common-mode signals produced by electromagnetic interference (EMI). We developed a portable device based on the studied electronic interface that represents a prototype system for further developments. We evaluated the performances of the developed device. The signal-to-noise ratio of the output signal is favorable, and all the features needed for a clinical evaluation (P waves, QRS complexes and T waves) are clearly readable.
可穿戴传感器在健康监测中的应用正在迅速发展。在过去的十年中，可穿戴技术因其商业原因引起了科技行业的广泛关注，也因其对患者健康的潜在益处引起了研究人员和临床医生的兴趣。可穿戴设备使用先进的专业传感器，不仅能够监测心率或步数等活动参数，还能够监测心电图（ECG）等生理参数。ECG 监测已成为现代智能手表最具吸引力的健康相关功能之一，由于心血管疾病（CVD）是全球主要死亡原因之一，使用智能手表来监测患者可能会对医疗保健系统的疾病治疗效果产生重大影响。商用可穿戴设备仅使用几个金属接触干电极即可记录单导联 ECG。这种测量只能用于心律失常诊断。对于其他心脏疾病的诊断，需要额外的 ECG 导联。在这项研究中，我们描述了一种电子接口，该接口将与多个非接触式电容电极一起使用，以便开发能够进行多个导联测量的可穿戴 ECG 设备。我们验证了电子接口放大差分生物电势和抑制由电磁干扰（EMI）产生的共模信号的能力。我们基于所研究的电子接口开发了一种便携式设备，它代表了进一步开发的原型系统。我们评估了所开发设备的性能。输出信号的信噪比良好，所有用于临床评估的特征（P 波、QRS 复合体和 T 波）都清晰可读。
