Flexible Electrode And Its Application In Clothing For Long-term ECG Monitoring

Using ECG smart clothing to monitor the human heart condition provides an ideal idea for the prevention and control of cardiovascular diseases.it can achieve the highest efficiency with the lowest cost,and save more lives lost which are due to poor disease management.Medical disposable gel electrodes used for ECG monitoring have limitations in signal stability and comfort which are not suitable for long-term ECG monitoring.Soft textile materials are selected for textile electrode,which is an effective way to improve the comfort of electrode.However,the ECG conduction process based on human biological signals is weak and complicated.Although the textile electrodes are not irritating,they are not in close contact with skin,which affects the signal accuracy.Therefore,improving the contact environment between electrodes and skin is a difficult problem to be solved in the design of ECG smart clothing.Focusing on the complicated surrounding environment between skin and electrode which is easy to cause motion artifacts duringlong-term monitoring of ECG signals,the following research was carried out:By exploring the factors that affect the electrode performance,the dynamic and static performance of the electrodes was tested under different humidity,pressure and friction coefficient.An optimized electrode was prepared by adding hygroscopic yarn and increasing pressure and friction coefficientfor improving the contact environment of the skin-electrode interface and the quality of the ECG signal.After that,the electrodes are knitted into the clothing to complete the design and integration of ECG smart clothing.The results showed thatunder the static high humidity environment,adding hygroscopic yarn to silver-plated fabric electrodes can improve electrode performance,including reducing the resistance of the electrode itself and improving the quality of the electrocardiogram.With the increase of humidity,the ECG quality of the electrode with cotton yarn is better,and the effect ismore stable than that with viscose yarn.In a certain range,the electrode performance will also increase with the pressure and friction coefficient of the electrode on the skin.In addition,the performance of electrodes with different kinds and weights is different under the same clothing pressure.Different motion states have different effects on electrode performance.Therefore,the electrode design needs to be considered from multiple angles.Besides,there is a lack of unified methods and standards for electrode evaluation at present.We also summarized and listed some electrode test indicators and methods,hoping to provide some information for the unification and establishment of electrode evaluation standards in the future.