Washable and Reliable Textile Electrodes Embedded into Underwear Fabric for Electrocardiography (ECG) Monitoring

A medical quality electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is necessary for permanent monitoring, and an accurate heart examination can be obtained from instrumented underwear only if it is equipped with high-quality, flexible, textile-based electrodes guaranteeing low contact resistance with the skin. The main objective of this article is to develop reliable and washable ECG monitoring underwear able to record and wirelessly send an ECG signal in real time to a smart phone and further to a cloud. The article focuses on textile electrode design and production guaranteeing optimal contact impedance. Therefore, different types of textile fabrics were coated with modified poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) in order to develop and manufacture reliable and washable textile electrodes assembled to female underwear (bras), by sewing using commercially available conductive yarns. Washability tests of connected underwear containing textile electrodes and conductive threads were carried out up to 50 washing cycles. The influence of standardized washing cycles on the quality of ECG signals and the electrical properties of the textile electrodes were investigated and characterized.

[1]  Voicu Groza,et al.  Impact of Skin–Electrode Interface on Electrocardiogram Measurements Using Conductive Textile Electrodes , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[2]  Sam Emaminejad,et al.  Fully integrated wearable sensor arrays for multiplexed in situ perspiration analysis , 2016, Nature.

[3]  Xuyuan Tao,et al.  How to Make Reliable, Washable, and Wearable Textronic Devices , 2017, Sensors.

[4]  Cedric Assambo,et al.  Determination of the parameters of the skin-electrode impedance model for ECG measurement , 2007 .

[5]  George G. Malliaras,et al.  Direct patterning of organic conductors on knitted textiles for long-term electrocardiography , 2015, Scientific Reports.

[6]  Jose L Puglisi,et al.  A simple device to illustrate the Einthoven triangle. , 2012, Advances in physiology education.

[7]  M. Aleksandrova,et al.  Electrical Characterization Of PEDOT:PSS Based Flexible Organic Optoelectronic Devices , 2016 .

[8]  Annalisa Bonfiglio,et al.  Fully Textile, PEDOT:PSS Based Electrodes for Wearable ECG Monitoring Systems , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[9]  T. Hua,et al.  Flexible Organic Electronics in Biology: Materials and Devices , 2015, Advanced materials.

[10]  X. Tao,et al.  Fiber‐Based Wearable Electronics: A Review of Materials, Fabrication, Devices, and Applications , 2014, Advanced materials.

[11]  L. Castano,et al.  Smart fabric sensors and e-textile technologies: a review , 2014 .

[12]  J. Dual,et al.  Mechanical characterization of PEDOT : PSS thin films , 2009 .