Energy Efficient Heart Rate Sensing using a Painted Electrode ECG Wearable

© 2017 IEEE. Many countries are facing burdens on their health care systems due to ageing populations. A promising strategy to address the problem is to allow selected people to remain in their homes and be monitored using recent advances in wearable devices, saving in-hospital resources. With respect to heart monitoring, wearable devices to date have principally used optical techniques by shining light through the skin. However, these techniques are severely hampered by motion artifacts and are limited to heart rate detection. Further, these optical devices consume a large amount of power in order to receive a sufficient signal, resulting in the need for frequent battery recharging. To address these shortcomings we present a new wrist ECG wearable that is similar to the clinical approach for heart monitoring. Our device weighs less than 30 g, and is ultra low power, extending the battery lifetime to over a month to make the device more appropriate for in-home health care applications. The device uses two electrodes activated by the user to measure the voltage across the wrists. The electrodes are made from a flexible ink and can be painted on to the device casing, making it adaptable for different shapes and users. In this paper we show how the ECG sensor can be integrated into an existing IoT wearable and compare the device\u27s accuracy against other common commercial devices

Flexible 3D-Printed EEG Electrodes

For electroencephalography (EEG) in haired regions of the head, finger-based electrodes have been proposed in order to part the hair and make a direct contact with the scalp. Previous work has demonstrated 3D-printed fingered electrodes to allow personalisation and different configurations of electrodes to be used for different people or for different parts of the head. This paper presents flexible 3D-printed EEG electrodes for the first time. A flexible 3D printing element is now used, with three different base mechanical structures giving differently-shaped electrodes. To obtain improved sensing performance, the silver coatings used previously have been replaced with a silver/silver-chloride coating. This results in reduced electrode contact impedance and reduced contact noise. Detailed electro-mechanical testing is presented to demonstrate the performance of the operation of the new electrodes, particularly with regards to changes in conductivity under compression, together with on-person tests to demonstrate the recording of EEG signals

3D Printed Dry EEG Electrodes

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a procedure that records brain activity in a non-invasive manner. The cost and size of EEG devices has decreased in recent years, facilitating a growing interest in wearable EEG that can be used out-of-the-lab for a wide range of applications, from epilepsy diagnosis, to stroke rehabilitation, to Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI). A major obstacle for these emerging applications is the wet electrodes, which are used as part of the EEG setup. These electrodes are attached to the human scalp using a conductive gel, which can be uncomfortable to the subject, causes skin irritation, and some gels have poor long-term stability. A solution to this problem is to use dry electrodes, which do not require conductive gel, but tend to have a higher noise floor. This paper presents a novel methodology for the design and manufacture of such dry electrodes. We manufacture the electrodes using low cost desktop 3D printers and off-the-shelf components for the first time. This allows quick and inexpensive electrode manufacturing and opens the possibility of creating electrodes that are customized for each individual user. Our 3D printed electrodes are compared against standard wet electrodes, and the performance of the proposed electrodes is suitable for BCI applications, despite the presence of additional noise

3D printer molds for head phantom shapes

Mold shapes for casting gelatine into a head shape for creating head phantoms as used in: - S. Kohli and A. J. Casson, “Removal of gross artifacts of transcranial alternating current stimulation in simultaneous EEG monitoring,” Sensors, vol. 19, no. 190, pp. 1–23, 2019. - S. Kohli and A. J. Casson, “Towards close-loop tES: Workload monitoring during tACS stimulation,” Brain Stimulation, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. e28–e29, 2017. - S. Kohli, S. Krachunov and A. J. Casson, “Towards closed-loop transcranial Electrical Stimulation: a comparison of methods for real time tES-EEG artefact removal using a phantom head model,” Brain Stimulation, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 467–468, 2017. - S. Kohli and A. J. Casson, “Towards signal processing assisted hardware for continuous in-band electrode impedance monitoring,” IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Baltimore, May 2017. Head shape is based upon a human dummy used for automotive testing, with source https://grabcad.com/library/mannequin-1. This has been hollowed out so that it can be filled with gelatine to get the wanted shape. The mold is broken down into 7 pieces, each small enough to be produced on a desktop sized 3D printer. These should be printed, and then a Silicone seal used to to have a water tight connection between the different parts, before filling with gelatine. We usually print in PLA, but a flexible filament could be used to help with easy removal. If you have a larger printer, the pieces could be combined (the best option is to have just two pieces to print and seal together as this will minimize leaks from the seal.

An Ultra Low Power Personalizable Wrist Worn ECG Monitor Integrated with IoT Infrastructure

© 2013 IEEE. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the U.K., motivating the use of long term wearable devices to monitor the heart in out-of-the-clinic settings. While a wide number of heart rate measuring wearable devices are now available, they are principally based upon photoplethysmography rather than the electrocardiogram (ECG) and are stand-alone devices rather than integrated with Internet-of-Things infrastructures which collect and combine information from a wide range of sensors. This paper presents a wrist worn ECG sensor which integrates with the SPHERE IoT platform-the UK\u27s demonstrator platform for health monitoring in the home environment, combining a range of on-person and ambient sensors. The ECG device integrates ultralow power consumption electronics with personalizable 3-D printed casings which maintain gold standard Ag/AgCl electrodes to provide measurements of the raw ECG waveform, heart rate, and meanNN and SDNN heart rate variability parameters. The end device allows for more than a month of battery life for a weight of \u3c50 g including the watch straps. The design and heart sensing performance of the device are presented in detail, together with the integration with the SPHERE IoT platform

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