A wireless noncontact ECG detection system based on capacitive coupling

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of global death. The Electrocardiogram (ECG) is the most widely adopted tool that measures the electrical activities of the heart from the body surface. However, heart rhythm irregularities and other heat attack problems cannot always be detected on a standard resting ECG machine, since they may not occur during an individual's recording session. Common Holter-based portable ECG detection systems lack the capability to provide real-time feedback and has allergic and discomfort problems cased by wet Ag/AgCl electrodes. In this paper, we seek to establish a cell phone-based real-time monitoring system for CVD. To improve the comfort during long term ECG monitoring, a noncontact ECG detection system based on capacitive coupling was designed, fabricated and tested. Capacitive sensing of ECG allows unobtrusively monitoring of the heart, thus has a lot of advantage over the conventional wet Ag/AgCl electrodes, such as zero preparation time, insensitive to skin conditions and has the potential to be embedded in the clothes etc.