Clinical Validation of a Capacitive Electrocardiogram Cushion Utilized for Arrhythmias Monitoring

Textile capacitively coupled (CC) electrodes have the potential of being integrated into home textiles to realize long-term cardiac surveillance, since they are more comfortable and convenient than conventional contact electrodes. Previous study mainly focused on the measurement performance of CC-based electrocardiogram (ECG) devices, but the diagnostic value of these novel devices, such as capability of supporting preliminary arrhythmia diagnosis, has not been investigated comprehensively. In this study, we proposed a CC-based ECG cushion and assessed measurement performance and diagnostic value by a clinical test on four healthy people (HP) and seven arrhythmia patients (AP). In addition to precise measurement of critical ECG structures (true positive rate (TPR) of R waves: 0.994 +/- 0.006 and mean absolute error (MAE) of RR intervals: 1.690 +/- 1.331 ms), the proposed cushion can provide valuable information, comparable with the Holter, for cardiologists to distinguish the normal beats, ventricular beats, and premature supraventricular contractions during long-term monitoring. In conclusion, the proposed cushion is verified to provide enough signal details for preliminary diagnosis of arrhythmia, as a promising system for disease screen and danger alarm of arrhythmia in certain scenario of long-term cardiac surveillance at home.