Printed and Flexible ECG Electrodes Attached to the Steering Wheel for Continuous Health Monitoring during Driving

Continuous health monitoring in a vehicle enables the earlier detection of symptoms of cardiovascular diseases. In this work, we designed flexible and thin electrodes made of polyurethane for long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring while driving. We determined the time for reliable ECG recordin...

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Published inSensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 22; no. 11; p. 4198
Main Authors Warnecke, Joana M, Ganapathy, Nagarajan, Koch, Eugen, Dietzel, Andreas, Flormann, Maximilian, Henze, Roman, Deserno, Thomas M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 31.05.2022
MDPI
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Summary:Continuous health monitoring in a vehicle enables the earlier detection of symptoms of cardiovascular diseases. In this work, we designed flexible and thin electrodes made of polyurethane for long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring while driving. We determined the time for reliable ECG recording to evaluate the effectiveness of the electrodes. We recorded data from 19 subjects under four scenarios: rest, city, highway, and rural. The recording time was five min for rest and 15 min for the other scenarios. The total recording (950 min) is publicly available under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. We used the simultaneous truth and performance level estimation (STAPLE) algorithm to detect the position of R-waves. Then, we derived the RR intervals to compare the estimated heart rate with the ground truth, which we obtained from ECG electrodes on the chest. We calculated the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and averaged it for the different scenarios. Highway had the lowest SNR (-6.69 dB) and rural had the highest (-6.80 dB). The usable time of the steering wheel was 42.46% (city), 46.67% (highway), and 47.72% (rural). This indicates that steering-wheel-based ECG recording is feasible and delivers reliable recordings from about 45.62% of the driving time. In summary, the developed electrodes allow continuous in-vehicle heart rate monitoring, and our publicly available recordings provide the opportunity to apply more sophisticated data analytics.
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ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s22114198