CardioGuard: A Brassiere-Based Reliable ECG Monitoring Sensor System for Supporting Daily Smartphone Healthcare Applications

Abstract

We propose CardioGuard, a brassiere-based reliable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring sensor system, for supporting daily smartphone healthcare applications. It is designed to satisfy two key requirements for user-unobtrusive daily ECG monitoring: reliability of ECG sensing and usability of the sensor. The system is validated through extensive evaluations. The evaluation results showed that the CardioGuard sensor reliably measure the ECG during 12 representative daily activities including diverse movement levels; 89.53% of QRS peaks were detected on average. The questionnaire-based user study with 15 participants showed that the CardioGuard sensor was comfortable and unobtrusive. Additionally, the signal-to-noise ratio test and the washing durability test were conducted to show the high-quality sensing of the proposed sensor and its physical durability in practical use, respectively.

Study design and rationale for biomedical shirt-based electrocardiography monitoring in relevant clinical situations: ECG-shirt study

“…Several reports have been published, in which wearable devices achieved very positive results with high diagnostic accuracy [3][4][5][6]. It was demonstrated that a garment-inserted electrocardiography (ECG) system can obtain similar results to those achieved with the conventional treadmill system during exercise testing,which may also include obtaining echocardiographic images [3].…”

“…Asimilar system (consisting of accelerometer and ECG) was also used to monitor heart rate and activities of rescuers (fire fighters and Civil Protection rescuers) during emergency interventions [4]. Kwon et al [5] investigated a brassiere-based ECG monitoring system (Cardio-Guard), which showed a high degree of reliability for daily continuous ECG monitoring in women. What is important, all wearable ECG systems presented to be comfortable during tests.…”

“…What is important, all wearable ECG systems presented to be comfortable during tests. This ensures an adequate level of adherence, mainly due to their non-invasive nature and non-interference with normal daily life activities [3][4][5][6].…”

Validity and Reliability of Three Commercially Available Smart Sports Bras during Treadmill Walking and Running

“…The concept of a heart rate sensing brassiere was reported in 2014 34 , and efforts have been made to utilize technology-sensing bras to detect breast cancer 35,36 . However, to our knowledge there have been no published investigations that have assessed the validity or reliability of heart rate sensing bras during exercise.…”

Sinabro: A Smartphone-Integrated Opportunistic Electrocardiogram Monitoring System

“…Prior studies have addressed such obtrusiveness. A popular approach is to reduce the user’s attention and consciousness by embedding the sensors into accessories, such as a wristband and a belt [ 2 , 3 , 6 , 7 ]. However, in this approach, monitoring is only possible when users are wearing such sensor-embedded accessories, limiting the use cases to clinical or fitness scenarios.…”