Applying NISHIJIN historical textile technique for e-Textile

Abstract

The e-Textile is the key technology for continuous ambient health monitoring to increase quality of life of patients with chronic diseases. The authors introduce techniques of Japanese historical textile, NISHIJIN, which illustrate almost any pattern from one continuous yarn within the machine weaving process, which is suitable for mixed flow production. Thus, NISHIJIN is suitable for e-Textile production, which requires rapid prototyping and mass production of very complicated patterns. The authors prototyped and evaluated a few vests to take twelve-lead electrocardiogram. The result tells that the prototypes obtains electrocardiogram, which is good enough for diagnosis.

The E-Textile for Biomedical Applications: A Systematic Review of Literature

“…In the last few years, although the research on the ECG monitoring in the field of wearable e-textiles seems still in a preliminary stage, few authors tried to develop slightly more complex e-textile solutions. For instance, in 2013 Kuroda et al [ 13 ] proposed two prototypes of e-textile sensing vests, where different combinations of conductive and nonconductive yarns were investigated. The first prototype demonstrated the Japanese NISHIJIN production process was suitable to acquire a clean ECG signal as well as the second more advanced prototype (albeit fabricated—for an eventual mass production—using a different manufacturing technique), although some limitations in the ECG acquisition appeared [ 13 ].…”

“…For instance, in 2013 Kuroda et al [ 13 ] proposed two prototypes of e-textile sensing vests, where different combinations of conductive and nonconductive yarns were investigated. The first prototype demonstrated the Japanese NISHIJIN production process was suitable to acquire a clean ECG signal as well as the second more advanced prototype (albeit fabricated—for an eventual mass production—using a different manufacturing technique), although some limitations in the ECG acquisition appeared [ 13 ]. In the same period, Catarino et al [ 12 ] investigated the capabilities of a novel shirt prototype; specifically, three electrodes were knitted with Elitex for a double purpose: firstly, to allow the integration of electrical connections in the textile substrate, and secondly, to fix the electrodes in specific areas of the shirt prototype.…”