Wearable Smart Textiles for Long-Term Electrocardiography Monitoring—A Review

Abstract

The continuous and long-term measurement and monitoring of physiological signals such as electrocardiography (ECG) are very important for the early detection and treatment of heart disorders at an early stage prior to a serious condition occurring. The increasing demand for the continuous monitoring of the ECG signal needs the rapid development of wearable electronic technology. During wearable ECG monitoring, the electrodes are the main components that affect the signal quality and comfort of the user. This review assesses the application of textile electrodes for ECG monitoring from the fundamentals to the latest developments and prospects for their future fate. The fabrication techniques of textile electrodes and their performance in terms of skin–electrode contact impedance, motion artifacts and signal quality are also reviewed and discussed. Textile electrodes can be fabricated by integrating thin metal fiber during the manufacturing stage of textile products or by coating textiles with conductive materials like metal inks, carbon materials, or conductive polymers. The review also discusses how textile electrodes for ECG function via direct skin contact or via a non-contact capacitive coupling. Finally, the current intensive and promising research towards finding textile-based ECG electrodes with better comfort and signal quality in the fields of textile, material, medical and electrical engineering are presented as a perspective.

Deep-Learning-Based Estimation of the Spatial QRS-T Angle from Reduced-Lead ECGs

“…Requiring one precordial lead evidently restricts the type of consumer healthcare devices suitable for deploying our deep learning model in future applications, precluding the use of devices that maximize comfort, such as wrist-worn wearables [ 47 ], which only register frontal-lead ECGs. Nevertheless, the market already offers a handful of practical devices that acquire frontal-and-one precordial lead ECGs with an acceptable degree of comfortableness [ 48 ], namely those patch-based (e.g., Bittium OmegaSnap™ [ 49 ]) or contact-based textile (e.g., Viscero ECG vest [ 50 ]) ECG electrodes. A downsize of eight to three electrodes is still a substantive improvement.…”

Development and Characterization of Embroidery-Based Textile Electrodes for Surface EMG Detection

“…Wearable technologies can be versatile and meet system requirements across domains because of the various sensors and actuators embedded in wearable devices. These devices can include smartwatches or smart clothing in terms of portability, human compatibility, and user interface because they are used in close contact with the human body [7][8][9][10]. The application of electronic devices for smart clothing for daily life is evolving from on-cloth to in-cloth.…”

Design, Characterization, and Performance of Woven Fabric Electrodes for Electrocardiogram Signal Monitoring

“…Currently, cardiovascular diseases are one of the major factors affecting human health, and lack of timely resuscitation after cardiac events is a common problem [ 1 ]. Analysis and alerting using real-time electrocardiogram (ECG) signals could offer a solution to decrease the death toll caused by cardiovascular diseases [ 2 , 3 ]. Due to the limitations of large volume and power supply conditions, the monitors of conventional ECG tests can only be used in hospitals and specific sites.…”