• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.249-253
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• 2008

The indirect-contact ECG (IDC-ECG) was introduced by a prior study for daily non-intrusive measurements. To improve the signal quality and to extend the application area of IDC-ECG, close study of the frequency characteristics of the IDC-ECG is necessary. In this study, the frequency response of the active electrode for several sample clothes was measured under conditions of actual IDC-ECG measurement with human body. Higher gain in low frequency range than expected by prior study was observed. In addition to it, wide variation in gain according to the cloth type in the low frequency range was observed. Variation in gain caused by moisture variation in the clothes was also observed. This study shows that the parallel R-C connection is proper for electrode model and the resistive factor is influenced by moisture in the clothes. This study is the first that provides the frequency response of the electrode in the actual indirect-contact ECG measurement and it is expected that the results will be helpful to improve the indirect-contact ECG method.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.776-781
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• 2008

In this study, ubiquitous health care system attaching in chair to monitor ECG for health care was developed at the unconsciousness state. The system conveniently and simple measured ECG at non-consciousness. We measured the contact impedance to skin-electrode of metal mesh electrodes of the system. Contact impedance enable the electrode to use for ECG measurement. The results are that the impedance of the metal mesh electrodes according to sizes is low when the size is 4$cm^2$. As the result, when the size of the metal mesh electrode is 4$cm^2$, the electrode is fit for ECG measurement. We can acquired by positing the arm on the metal mesh electrode. The ECG signal was detected using a high-input-impedance bio-amplifier, and then passed filter circuitry. The measured signal transmitted to a PC through the bluetooth wireless communication and monitored. Data of the non-constrained ECG system attaching in chair is noise-data when comparing metal mesh electrode with the Ag/Agcl electrode but the data is significant to monitor ECG for check the body state.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.43-52
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• 2014

P-wave characteristic in the human electrocardiogram (ECG) is important in the diagnosis of atrial conduction pathology. In this paper, we measured an ECG signal from patient with cardiovascular disease using one lead ECG electrode system which is based on the wireless cardiac monitoring system. And we detected a P-wave in ECG signal using the complex-valued continuous wavelet transforms (CWT) according to two kinds of patch type electrodes such as an existing narrow patch type electrode and the improved wide patch type electrode presented in this paper. Also, we compared the characteristics in detecting the P-wave in terms of the magnitude and the width of P-waves. From the results of comparison we found that the width and the magnitude of P-wave detected using the wide patch type electrode is improved to be interpreted easier compared to those using the narrow patch type electrode. Furthermore, we have also proven that the complex-valued CWT can be used as a robust detector for P-wave in ECG signal analysis.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.150-154
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• 2016

Contact electrodes pose threats like inflammation, metal poisoning, and allergic reaction to the user during long term ECG procedure. Therefore, we present a novel noncontact electrocardiographic electrode designed through microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) process. The proposed ECG electrode consists of small inner and large outer circular copper plates separated by thin insulator. The inner plate enables capacitive transduction of bio-potential variations on a subject’s chest into a voltage that can be processed by a signal processing board, whereas the outer plate shields the inner plate from environmental electromagnetic noise. The electrode lead wires are also coaxially designed to prevent cables from coupling to ground or electronic devices. A prototype ECG electrode has an area of about 2.324 cm², is very flexible and does not require power to operate. The prototype ECG electrode could measure ECG at about 500 um distance from the subject’s chest.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.63 no.10
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• pp.1448-1454
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• 2014

In this study, a new type of electrode device is implemented to measure the capacitance energy and interpret it as the ECG (Electrocardiogram) data. The main idea of this new electrode system is to estimate the capacitance on the skin by assembling a capacitive-coupled circuits and translate into the ECG signal. To measure the coupling energy and estimate the aquired data in terms of heart activity, the capacitive-coupled electrode is garmented with fabrics in the form of a chest band or a vest jacket. To compare the ECG data from the capacitive-coupled electrode with the conventional electrode(Ag-AgCl) system, the corelation coefficient between two signals is computed as 0.9517. Thus, we can conclude the fact that capacitive-coupled electrode system can measure a person's heart activity without any contact to his or her skin and can the interpreted as the ECG data.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.366-371
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• 2017

In this paper, we introduce an electrocardiogram (ECG) system designed to solve problems caused by wetgels and motion artifacts in measuring active movement. The system is called a dry-contact ECG and was designed by considering impedance matching between skin and electrode as well as the frictional electricity between electrode and clothes. In order to create the system, we measured impedance on the skin-electrode interface, and the result was applied to the electronic circuit scheme. Moreover, we added an electrode on the back of the measurement electrode to make a flow path to ground the electrical noise. The final ECG circuit and novel electrode were used to detect real human cardiac signals from a subject who was tested while standing still and walking. The signals obtained from the two activities were nicely shaped, without any motion artifact noise. We took electrode size into account in this study because the impedance depended on the area of the electrode. An electrode of 50 mm diameter showed the best curve for the ECG signal without any electrical noise.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.402-408
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• 2014

Heart rate is one of the most important signal to monitor the health condition of the patient or exerciser. Various wearable devices have been developed for the continuous monitoring of ECG signal from human body during exercise. Among these, ECG chest belt has been widely used. However wearing chest belt with ECG sensor is uncomfortable in normal life due to the electrode contact between metal electrodes of ECG sensor and skin of the human body. So we develop the royal healthcare backpack that can measure ECG signal without skin contact by using capacitor-type ECG sensor. The position of the measurement point is critical to collect a clear ECG signal in the capacitive ECG measurement from backpack. Various tests were conducted to find the optimal ECG measurement position which has less noise and could get strong and clear ECG signal during exercise, walking, hiking, mountain climbing and cycling.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.1102-1108
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• 2008

Wearable physiological signal monitoring systems are regarded as an important sensing unit platforms in ubiquitous/mobile healthcare application. In this paper, we suggested the modified bipolar electrodes implemented on the portable heart activity monitoring system, which minimized the distance of electrodes formed on a attachable pad. The proposed electrode configuration is useful in mobile measurement environments, but has a disadvantage of reduced amplitude of the heart action potential. In order to overcome the shortcoming of the suggested electrode configuration, we implemented the amplifying circuit to increase the signal-gain and decrease the artifacts. For evaluations, we analyzed the specificity of measured cardiography using the proposed electrodes through the comparing of heart activity monitoring system with standard clinical ECG(lead2) by pearson correlation coefficients. The result showed that the average correlation coefficient is $0.903{\pm}0.036,\;0.873{\pm}0.072$ at V3, V4 chest lead position, respectively. Thus, the modified bipolar electrode is quite suitable to monitor the electrical activity of the heart in the situation of the mobile environment, and could be considered having high similarity with standard clinical ECG.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.55 no.7
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• pp.335-343
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• 2006

We have designed the system that measure one channel ECG by two electrode and extract real-time EDR with more related resipiration and comportable to subject by using conductive textile. On the assumption that relation between RL electrode and potential measurement electrode is coupled with RC connected model, we designed RL drive output to feedback two electrode for reduction of common mode signal. The conductive textile which was used for two ECG electrode was offered more comfort during night sleep in bed than any other method using attachments. In the method of single-lead EDR, R wave point or QRS interval area could be used for EDR estimation in traditional method, it is, so to speak, the amplitude modulation(AM) method for EDR. Alternatively, R-R interval could be used for frequency modulation(FM) method based on Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia(RSA). For evaluation of performance on AM EDR and FM EDR from 14 subject, ECG lead III was measured. Each EDR was compared with both temperature around nose(direct measurement of respiration) and respiration signal from thoracic belt(indirect measurement of respiration) on mean squared error(MSE), cross correlation(Xcorr), and Coherence. The upsampling interpolation technique of multirate signal processing is applied to interpolating data instead of cubic spline interpolation. As a result, we showed the real-time EDR extraction processing to be implemented at micro-controller.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.300-308
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• 2010

This paper describes the development of a low-power electrocardiogram (ECG) touch sensor intended for the use with two dry metal electrodes. An equivalent ECG extraction circuit model encountered in a ground-free two-electrode configuration is investigated for an optimal sensor read-out circuit design criteria. From the equivalent circuit model, (1) maximum sensor resolution is derived based on the electrode's background thermal noise, which originates from high electrode-skin contact impedance, together with the input referred noise of instrumentation amplifier (IA), (2) 60 Hz electrostatic coupling from mains and motion artifact are also considered to determine minimum requirement of common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) and input impedance of IA. A dedicated ECG read-out front end incorporating chopping scheme is introduced to provide an input referred circuit noise of 1.3 ${\mu}V_{rms}$ over 0.5 Hz ~ 200 Hz, CMRR of IA > 100 dB, sensor resolution of 7 bits, and dissipating only 36 ${\mu}W$. Together with 8 bits synchronous successive approximation register (SAR) ADC, the sensor IC chip is implemented in 0.18 ${\mu}m$ CMOS technology and integrated on a 5 cm $\times$ 8 cm PCB with two copper patterned electrodes. With the help of proposed touch sensor, ECG signal containing QRS complex and P, T waves are successfully extracted by simply touching the electrodes with two thumbs.