Flexible Non-contact Electrodes for Wearable Biosensors System on Electrocardiogram Monitoring in Motion

Xin Wang; Shuting Liu; Mingxing Zhu; Yuchao He; Zhilong Wei; Yingying Wang; Yangjie Xu; Hongguang Pan; Weimin Huang; Shixiong Chen; Guanglin Li

doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.900146

Flexible Non-contact Electrodes for Wearable Biosensors System on Electrocardiogram Monitoring in Motion

Front Neurosci. 2022 Jun 7:16:900146. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.900146. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Xin Wang^{1

2

3}, Shuting Liu⁴, Mingxing Zhu^{1

5}, Yuchao He^{1

3}, Zhilong Wei^{1

3}, Yingying Wang^{1

2

3}, Yangjie Xu⁶, Hongguang Pan⁷, Weimin Huang⁸, Shixiong Chen^{1

3}, Guanglin Li^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
² Shenzhen College of Advanced Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
³ Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory of Human-Machine Intelligence-Synergy Systems, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China.
⁴ Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
⁵ School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China.
⁶ Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
⁷ Department of Otolaryngology, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, China.
⁸ Department of Neonatology, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is a critical physiological indicator that contains abundant information about human heart activities. However, it is a kind of weak low-frequency signal, which is easy to be interfered by various noises. Therefore, wearable biosensors (WBS) technique is introduced to overcome this challenge. A flexible non-contact electrode is proposed for wearable biosensors (WBS) system, which is made up of flexible printed circuits materials, and can monitor the ECG signals during exercise for a long time. It uses the principle of capacitive coupling to obtain high-quality signals, and reduces the impact of external noise through active shielding; The results showed that the proposed non-contact electrode was equivalent to a medical wet electrode. The correlation coefficient was as high as 99.70 ± 0.30% when the subject was resting, while it was as high as 97.53 ± 1.80% during exercise. High-quality ECG could still be collected at subjects walking at 7 km/h. This study suggested that the proposed flexible non-contact electrode would be a potential tool for wearable biosensors for medical application on long-term monitoring of patients' health and provide athletes with physiological signal measurements.

Keywords: electrocardiogram; flexible non-contact electrode; monitoring; motion; wearable biosensors system.