Performance Evaluation of Sensing Fabrics for Monitoring Physiological and Biomechanical Variables

Abstract

In the last few years, the smart textile area has become increasingly widespread, leading to developments in new wearable sensing systems. Truly wearable instrumented garments capable of recording behavioral and vital signals are crucial for several fields of application. Here we report on results of a careful characterization of the performance of innovative fabric sensors and electrodes able to acquire vital biomechanical and physiological signals, respectively. The sensing function of the fabric sensors relies upon newly developed strain sensors, based on rubber-carbon-coated threads, and mainly depends on the weaving topology, and the composition and deposition process of the conducting rubber-carbon mixture. Fabric sensors are used to acquire the respitrace (RT) and movement sensors (MS). Sensing features of electrodes, instead rely upon metal-based conductive threads, which are instrumental in detecting bioelectrical signals, such as electrocardiogram (ECG) and electromyogram (EMG). Fabric sensors have been tested during some specific tasks of breathing and movement activity, and results have been compared with the responses of a commercial piezoelectric sensor and an electrogoniometer, respectively. The performance of fabric electrodes has been investigated and compared with standard clinical electrodes.

A Wearable System for the Evaluation of the Human-Horse Interaction: A Preliminary Study

“…Secondly, electrodes are made of a special multilayer structure of textile material that increases the amount of sweat and reduces the rate of evaporation reaching very rapidly an electrochemical equilibrium between skin and electrode. This means that the signal quality [72] is remarkably improved and kept as constant as possible. These materials are knitted together and are fully integrated in the garment without any mechanical and physical discontinuity, creating areas with different functionalities (see Figure 1).…”

“…The potentialities deriving from these kinds of textile sensors enable the application of wearable systems in a great variety of experimental settings. As a matter of fact, many human studies showed reliable recordings of biomedical signals [64][65][66][67][68]: for example, ECG in [69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76], respiration in [69,70,73,74,[77][78][79], electrodermal response (EDR) in [51,80] and, finally, PhotoPlethysmoGraphy (PPG)and blood pressure in [81,82]. In this kind of application, physiological signals are monitored and recorded in order to evaluate or follow the health status of the person who is wearing the wearable device [48,83].…”

“…Here, we propose the use of wearable systems in both animals and humans simultaneously, in order to acquire their cardiac activity in a reliable and artifact-free way, as was generally demonstrated in [72,[88][89][90][91][92]. The aim is to infer autonomic nervous system responses enabling the detection of uncontrolled responses of animals when elicited with emotional stimuli coming from humans and vice versa.…”

Non-Invasive Devices for Early Detection of Breast Tissue Oncological Abnormalities Using Microwave Radio Thermometry

“…Introduction of microelectronic microwave components close to the antenna requires appropriate textile integration technologies. This aspect has been dealt within various publications both with woven and nonwoven materials (Catrysse et al, 2004;Hermans et al, 2005;Van Langenhove et al, 2003a, 2003bScilingo et al, 2005. However, only little data is available on the microwave properties of different woven and nonwoven materials (Locher, 2006).…”

A Primary Study of Indirect ECG Monitor Embedded in a Bed for Home Health Care

“…Therefore, the proposed system appears promising for application to bedding as a non-invasive and awareness-free system for ECG monitoring during sleep. (10) ，Paradiso ( …”