Wireless Arm Wearable Sensor Band for Long-Term Heart Rhythms Surveillance Using a Bipolar Arm-ECG Lead

Bipolar ECG signals obtained from sensors in a band on the left upper-arm after signal processing can provide recordings of sufficient quality for long-term ECG monitoring. We present an cable-free, wearable sensor system (WAMECG1) for bipolar arm-ECG recording and wireless data transmission over a Wi-Fi link. The system's functional blocks were integrated into an ergonomically designed armband ECG device. A retrospective pilot analysis of the WASTCArD arm-ECG mapping database from our previous work, was perforned to obtain the optimal axis rotation of the bipolar electrodes pair with respect to the frontal ECG plane and the arm axilla point. The optimal signal was found to be at -30° axis rotation. Then, signal quality of the recorded far-field bipolar arm-ECG was validated in a pilot trial with 10 volunteer subjects at rest using the prototype device. The overall R peak detection accuracy was 99.67%. Without using any signal enhancement algorithm, the average signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) values was 16.73. These performance assessment results validated the performance of the wearable arm-band prototype device.