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A low-power and miniaturized electrocardiograph data collection system with smart textile electrodes for monitoring of cardiac function

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Abstract

With the increasing aging population as well as health concerns, chronic heart disease has become the focus of public attention. A comfortable, low-powered, and wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) system for continuously monitoring the elderly’s ECG signals over several hours is important for preventing cardiovascular diseases. Traditional ECG monitoring apparatus is often inconvenient to carry, has many electrodes to attach to the chest, and has a high-power consumption. There is also a challenge to design an electrocardiograph that satisfies requirements such as comfort, confinement, and compactness. Based on these considerations, this study presents a biosensor acquisition system for wearable, ubiquitous healthcare applications using three textile electrodes and a recording circuit specialized for ECG monitoring. In addition, several methods were adopted to reduce the power consumption of the device. The proposed system is composed of three parts: (1) an ECG analog front end (AFE), (2) digital signal processing and micro-control circuits, and (3) system software. Digital filter methods were used to eliminate the baseline wander, skin contact noise, and other interfering signals. A comparative study was conducted using this system to observe its performance with two commercial Holter monitors. The experimental results demonstrated that the total power consumption of this proposed system in a full round of ECG acquisition was only 29.74 mW. In addition, this low-power system performed well and stably measured the heart rate with an accuracy of 98.55 %. It can also contain a real-time dynamic display with organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) and wirelessly transmit information via a Bluetooth 4.0 module.

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Acknowledgments

The paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61427806 and No. 61372006), the science technology and innovation committee of Shenzhen for research projects (Grant CXZZ20140909004122087), Guangdong Image-guided Therapy Innovation Team (2011S013), the Guangzhou Science and Technology Planning Project (No. 2014J4100153 & No. 2016A030310129).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China

      Ming Dai, Xin Chen, Haoming Lin & Siping Chen

    2. Guangdong Key Laboratory for Biomedical Measurements and Ultrasound Imaging, Shenzhen, 518060, China

      Ming Dai, Xin Chen, Haoming Lin & Siping Chen

    3. Key Laboratory of Eco-Textiles, Ministry of Education, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China

      Xueliang Xiao

    4. Institute of Biomedical and Health Engineering, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

      Wanqing Wu

    5. National-Regional Key Technology Engineering Laboratory for Medical Ultrasound, Shenzhen, 518060, China

      Xin Chen & Siping Chen

    Authors
    1. Ming Dai
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    2. Xueliang Xiao
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    3. Xin Chen
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    4. Haoming Lin
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    Corresponding authors

    Correspondence to Wanqing Wu or Siping Chen.

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    M. Dai and X. Xiao contributed equally to this work.

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    Dai, M., Xiao, X., Chen, X. et al. A low-power and miniaturized electrocardiograph data collection system with smart textile electrodes for monitoring of cardiac function. Australas Phys Eng Sci Med 39, 1029–1040 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-016-0483-5

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-016-0483-5

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