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

Abstract

The use of e-textile technologies spread out in the scientific research with several applications in both medical and nonmedical world. In particular, wearable technologies and miniature electronics devices were implemented and tested for medical research purposes. In this paper, a systematic review regarding the use of e-textile for clinical applications was conducted: the Scopus and Pubmed databases were investigate by considering research studies from 2010 to 2020. Overall, 262 papers were found, and 71 of them were included in the systematic review. Of the included studies, 63.4% focused on information and communication technology studies, while the other 36.6% focused on industrial bioengineering applications. Overall, 56.3% of the research was published as an article, while the remainder were conference papers. Papers included in the review were grouped by main aim into cardiological, muscular, physical medicine and orthopaedic, respiratory, and miscellaneous applications. The systematic review showed that there are several types of applications regarding e-textile in medicine and several devices were implemented as well; nevertheless, there is still a lack of validation studies on larger cohorts of subjects since the majority of the research only focuses on developing and testing the new device without considering a further extended validation.

Textile‐Based Flexible Temperature Sensors for Wearable and Sports Applications

“…[58] Similarly, in 1985, Harry wainwright designed an animated sweatshirt [59] whereas in 1995 wainwright introduced a machine-enabling fiber optics. [60] Since then textile has been embarking its traces in electronics for applications in healthcare, [61,62] biomedical, [11] sports, [14] and motion detection, [18,63] etc. In the year 2001, Levi and Phillips electronics designed a jacket VivoMetrics LifeShirt and liquid crystal display (LCD)þ [64] but they discontinued because of its poor market sales.…”

“…The most advanced category is counted where the fiber is designed to work as either a sensor or actuator itself. E‐textiles have a wide variety of applications in biomedical, [ 2,11,12 ] sports, [ 13,14 ] health monitoring, [ 15–17 ] motion detection, [ 18–20 ] personal protection, [ 21 ] and military purposes. [ 22 ]…”

“…The most advanced category is counted where the fiber is designed to work as either a sensor or actuator itself. E-textiles have a wide variety of applications in biomedical, [2,11,12] sports, [13,14] health monitoring, [15][16][17] motion detection, [18][19][20] personal protection, [21] and military purposes. [22] The growth of sensors in e-textiles has caught the attention of the researchers in recent years because of their flexibility and structural geometry.…”

Biomechanical Effects of Using a Passive Exoskeleton for the Upper Limb in Industrial Manufacturing Activities: A Pilot Study

“…These sensors are small and can be in contact with the subject’s body, providing accurate and realistic measurements. In recent years, there has been a rise in proposed solutions in textile technology for medical purposes, particularly for diagnosis and monitoring outside of the laboratory [ 22 ]. This increase is not coincidental.…”

Performance Optimization of Wearable Printed Human Body Temperature Sensor Based on Silver Interdigitated Electrode and Carbon-Sensing Film

“…Ideally, these sensors are fabricated on biocompatible polymeric films and applied to the human skin. Particularly, these soft sensor patches are fabricated as e-tattoos and attached directly to the human skin or developed on highly deformable textile substrates [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Human body temperature is one of the key vital signs which has received special attention due to its capability of early indication of a variety of diseases [ 8 , 9 ].…”