Using Flexible Curved Noncontact Active Electrodes to Monitor Long-Term Heart Rate Variability.

Ji-Jer Huang,Zhe-Lin Cai

doi:10.1155/2020/8867712

Ji-Jer Huang, Zhe-Lin Cai

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8867712

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to utilize flexible curved noncontact active electrodes to develop a nonperception, long-term, and wireless heart rate monitoring system. This study also verified the functions and capabilities of the system and provided information on physiological parameters recorded during our tests. Our system was used in tandem with a commercially standard measurement system; both systems were used to measure ECG signals on 10 healthy subjects under the simulated home and office scenarios. We verified the R-peak measurement accuracy of our system and used T-tests to analyze the data collected by both systems; our system reached an average sensitivity value of 0.983 and an average positive predictive value of 0.991 over several different scenarios where R-peak measurements were also highly accurate. The R-R time intervals of our system were highly consistent with the standard system. The correlation coefficient calculated reached almost one, and the differences between the two systems mostly fell within the ±10 ms range. Further study of the HRV time-domain parameters under four different scenarios showed no significant differences in most HRV parameters compared to the measurements by the standard system. We also used our system to record long-term heart rate signals.

Highlights

Adapting to lifestyle changes and the rapid pace of today’s society can be stressful for our lives
We hope that continuous measurements of heart rate signals and calculations of the heart rate variability (HRV) parameters can help us assess the status of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. ose HRV parameters can serve as important indicators of the stress level
We evaluated the quality of our signal measurement through sensitivity (Se) and positive predictive value (PPV) analyses. e analyses were divided into three parts: the first part was verification of R-peak detection accuracy in determining the stability of the system; the second part was verification of R-R time intervals and analysis of correlation with signals measured by the BioPAC MP150 (ECG100C); the third part was verification of differences in HRV parameters, where we took R-R time interval information captured from our 10 test subjects and used our self-developed software to calculate HRV parameters for comparison

Summary

Introduction

Adapting to lifestyle changes and the rapid pace of today’s society can be stressful for our lives. Over a long period of time, the stress may cause cardiovascular disorders. Many people may not be aware that stress can cause symptoms such as constipation, poor sleep, allergies, fatigue, anxiety, and weight gain, all of which are harbingers of serious physical disorders. Excessive stress can result in physical imbalances that affect the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the endocrine system. We hope that continuous measurements of heart rate signals and calculations of the heart rate variability (HRV) parameters can help us assess the status of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. Ose HRV parameters can serve as important indicators of the stress level. HRV is correlated with physical and mental health and can reflect the state of balance between the autonomic and nonautonomic nervous systems. The “white coat effect” of hospitals has been well known to affect the measurements of physiological signals in patients

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