Multiobjective optimization-based design of wearable electrocardiogram monitoring systems

Abstract

Nowadays, the use of Wearable User Interfaces has been extensively growing in medical monitoring applications. However, production and manufacture of prototypes without automation tools may lead to non viable results since it is often common to find an optimization problem where several variables are in conflict with each other. Thus, it is necessary to design a strategy for balancing the variables and constraints, systematizing the design in order to reduce the risks that are present when it is exclusively guided by the intuition of the developer. This paper proposes a framework for designing wearable ECG monitoring systems using multi-objective optimization. The main contributions of this work are the model to automate the design process, including a mathematical expression relating the principal variables that make up the criteria of functionality and wearability. We also introduce a novel yardstick for deciding the location of electrodes, based on reducing interference from ECG by maximizing the electrode-skin contact.

Multiobjective Design of Wearable Sensor Systems for Electrocardiogram Monitoring

“…In the particular case of ECG monitoring, the constraints reflecting where sensors can gather useful information about the human body and the constraints of wearability should be strongly considered [37]. Moreover, the following variables have been reported as having a substantial influence on the ECG measurement: sensor location [12,30,33,38], the electrode-skin contact [30,38,39], and signal quality [13,28,30]. Despite this reported importance, a close relationship…”

“…Processing Interaction Size (volume) [7,13,28,[30][31][32][33][34][35] Latency [12,13] Skin irritation [8] Weight [7-9, 12, 13, 28, 30, 31, 33-35] Processing power and computational cost [16,30,32] Comfort, thermal aspects, heat dissipation [8-13, 30, 31, 33] Electrical resistance [8,30] Security and privacy [8,30,31] User Interface [11,[30][31][32] Stiffness and flexural endurance [8,30] Communication channels, networking [7,8,13,30,31,34] Weather [11,30] Fluid repellency [28,40] Storage capacity and memory [7,10] Need for survival and medical prescriptions [30,[41][42][43]] Magnetic shielding and radiation concerns [8,13,28,30] Dynamic volt...…”