Polypyrrole (PPy) Coated Patterned Vertical Carbon Nanotube (pvCNT) Dry ECG Electrode Integrated with a Novel Wireless Resistive Analog Passive (WRAP) ECG Sensor

Polypyrrole (PPy) Coated Patterned Vertical Carbon Nanotube (pvCNT) Dry ECG Electrode Integrated with a Novel Wireless Resistive Analog Passive (WRAP) ECG Senso

Design, Fabrication and Experimental Validation of a Novel Dry-Contact Sensor for Measuring Electroencephalography Signals without Skin Preparation

In the present study, novel dry-contact sensors for measuring electro-encephalography (EEG) signals without any skin preparation are designed, fabricated by an injection molding manufacturing process and experimentally validated. Conventional wet electrodes are commonly used to measure EEG signals; they provide excellent EEG signals subject to proper skin preparation and conductive gel application. However, a series of skin preparation procedures for applying the wet electrodes is always required and usually creates trouble for users. To overcome these drawbacks, novel dry-contact EEG sensors were proposed for potential operation in the presence or absence of hair and without any skin preparation or conductive gel usage. The dry EEG sensors were designed to contact the scalp surface with 17 spring contact probes. Each probe was designed to include a probe head, plunger, spring, and barrel. The 17 probes were inserted into a flexible substrate using a one-time forming process via an established injection molding procedure. With these 17 spring contact probes, the flexible substrate allows for high geometric conformity between the sensor and the irregular scalp surface to maintain low skin-sensor interface impedance. Additionally, the flexible substrate also initiates a sensor buffer effect, eliminating pain when force is applied. The proposed dry EEG sensor was reliable in measuring EEG signals without any skin preparation or conductive gel usage, as compared with the conventional wet electrodes

A Hybrid-Powered Wireless System for Multiple Biopotential Monitoring

Chronic diseases are the top cause of human death in the United States and worldwide. A huge amount of healthcare costs is spent on chronic diseases every year. The high medical cost on these chronic diseases facilitates the transformation from in-hospital to out-of-hospital healthcare. The out-of-hospital scenarios require comfortability and mobility along with quality healthcare. Wearable electronics for well-being management provide good solutions for out-of-hospital healthcare. Long-term health monitoring is a practical and effective way in healthcare to prevent and diagnose chronic diseases. Wearable devices for long-term biopotential monitoring are impressive trends for out-of-hospital health monitoring. The biopotential signals in long-term monitoring provide essential information for various human physiological conditions and are usually used for chronic diseases diagnosis. This study aims to develop a hybrid-powered wireless wearable system for long-term monitoring of multiple biopotentials. For the biopotential monitoring, the non-contact electrodes are deployed in the wireless wearable system to provide high-level comfortability and flexibility for daily use. For providing the hybrid power, an alternative mechanism to harvest human motion energy, triboelectric energy harvesting, has been applied along with the battery to supply energy for long-term monitoring. For power management, an SSHI rectifying strategy associated with triboelectric energy harvester design has been proposed to provide a new perspective on designing TEHs by considering their capacitance concurrently. Multiple biopotentials, including ECG, EMG, and EEG, have been monitored to validate the performance of the wireless wearable system. With the investigations and studies in this project, the wearable system for biopotential monitoring will be more practical and can be applied in the real-life scenarios to increase the economic benefits for the health-related wearable devices

Dry EEG Electrodes

Electroencephalography (EEG) emerged in the second decade of the 20th century as a technique for recording the neurophysiological response. Since then, there has been little variation in the physical principles that sustain the signal acquisition probes, otherwise called electrodes. Currently, new advances in technology have brought new unexpected fields of applications apart from the clinical, for which new aspects such as usability and gel-free operation are first order priorities. Thanks to new advances in materials and integrated electronic systems technologies, a new generation of dry electrodes has been developed to fulfill the need. In this manuscript, we review current approaches to develop dry EEG electrodes for clinical and other applications, including information about measurement methods and evaluation reports. We conclude that, although a broad and non-homogeneous diversity of approaches has been evaluated without a consensus in procedures and methodology, their performances are not far from those obtained with wet electrodes, which are considered the gold standard, thus enabling the former to be a useful tool in a variety of novel applications.This work was supported by Nicolo Association for the R+D+i in Neurotechnologies for disability, the research project P11-TIC-7983, Junta of Andalucia (Spain) and the Spanish National Grant TIN2012-32030, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). We also thank Erik Jung, head of the Medical Microsystems working group, at the Department of System Integration & Interconnection Technologies, Fraunhofer IZM (Berlin), for his support

Study of the properties of Plessey's electrocardiographic capacitive electrodes for portable systems

Cardiac diseases are still most widely spread in all regions of the world. And more and more devices are invented to satisfy increasing requirements of the patients. One of the perspective technologies in cardiac diagnostics is capacitive sensing ECG electrodes

Radio telemetry devices to monitor breathing in non-sedated animals

Radio telemetry equipment has significantly improved over the last 10-15 years and is increasingly being used in research for monitoring a variety of physiological parameters in non-sedated animals. The aim of this review is to provide an update on the current state of development of radio telemetry for recording respiration. Our literature review found only rare reports of respiratory studies via radio telemetry. Much of this article will hence report our experience with our custom-built radio telemetry devices designed for recording respiratory signals, together with numerous other physiological signals in lambs. Our current radio telemetry system allows to record 24 simultaneous signals 24h/day for several days. To our knowledge, this is the highest number of physiological signals, which can be recorded wirelessly. Our devices have been invaluable for studying respiration in our ovine models of preterm birth, reflux laryngitis, postnatal exposure to cigarette smoke, respiratory syncytial virus infection and nasal ventilation, all of which are relevant to neonatal respiratory problems