• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.201-206
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• 2012

The indirect-contact ECG measurement is a newly developed method for unconstrained and nonconscious measurement in daily life. This study introduced a new method of electrode circuit design developed for reducing the 60Hz power line noise observed at the indirect-contact ECG measurement. By the introduced common-mode-driven shielding, the voltage of the electrical shield surrounding the capacitive coupling electrode is maintained at the same as the common mode voltage. Though the method cannot reduce the level of common mode voltage itself, that reduces effectively the differential mode noise converted from the common mode voltage by the difference of cloth impedance between the two capacitive coupling electrode. The experiment results using the actual indirect-contact ECG showed that the 60Hz power line noise was reduced remarkably though the reduction ratio was smaller than the expected by the theory. Especially, the reduction ratio became large for the large difference of cloth. It is expected that the introduced method is useful for reducing the power line noise under condition of poor electrical grounding.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.44-49
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• 2012

The indirect-contact ECG measurement is a newly developed method for unconstrained and nonconscious measurement in daily Life. This study is the first step to reducing the large background noise appearing in indirect-contact ECG. This study built the thermal noise model of capacitively coupled active electrode which is used in indirect-contact ECG. The results show that the level of thermal noise estimated by the thermal noise model is much the same as that of actual background noise for the capacitively coupled active electrode alone. By applying the actual electrical properties of a sample cotton cloth to the thermal noise model, the theoretical level of thermal noise in the indirect-contact ECG was estimated. The results also show that the level of op-amp's intrinsic noise is so small that it can be negligible in comparison with thermal noise of resistors. The relationship between the level of thermal noise and the resistance of the bias resistor was derived, and it is the base for the further study how to choice the optimal resistance for the bias resistor.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.56-62
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• 2015

In this study, we implemented an unconstraint ECG monitoring system on a chair. Nowadays, modern people spend most of their time sitting on the chair. Therefore, it is necessary to have an unconstraint ECG monitoring system that can be used for a long time. The implemented system can perform measurement even with clothes on and it has great advantage on motion artifacts. A pair of unconstraint electrodes are placed on the back of the chair. Amplifier and filters are designed to remove motion artifacts, The baseline noise and power line noise are filtered and very low level of bio-signal is amplified to give a final measurement. Control unit and wireless transmission unit are implemented. Analog signal is converted into digital signal and transmits biological signal to the PC and the smart phone. Therefore continuous ECG monitoring in daily life is made possible. A comparison experiment between Ag / AgCl electrode and unconstraint electrode is conducted to evaluate the performance of the implemented system. As a result, we confirm our unconstraint system can be used for daily life ECG monitoring.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.372-377
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• 2014

Being able to monitor the heart will allow the diagnosis of heart diseases for patients during daily activities, and the detection of burden on the heart during strenuous exercise. Furthermore, with the help of U-health technology, immediate medical action can be taken, in the case of abnormal symptoms of the heart in daily life. Therefore, it appears to be necessary to develop the corresponding technology to monitor the condition of the heart daily. In this study, a novel wearable smart system was proposed, to monitor the activity of the heart in daily life, and to further evaluate the rhythm of arrhythmia. The wearable system includes three modified bipolar conductive fiber electrodes in the chest part, which can resolve the reduction problem of the magnitude of the signal, by magnifying the signal and removing the noise, to obtain high affinity and validity for medical-type usage (<0.903%). The biological signal acquisition and data lines, and the signal processing engine and communication consist of a conductive ink, and the pic18 and ANT protocol nRF24AP2, respectively. The proposed algorithm was able to detect a strong ECG, signal and r-point passing over the noise. The confidence intervals were 96 %, which could satisfy the requirement to detect arrhythmia under the unconstrained conditions.