Multimodal remote chest monitoring system with wearable sensors: a validation study in healthy subjects.

OBJECTIVE: Development of wearable medical technology for remote monitoring of patients suffering from chronic lung diseases may improve the care, therapy and outcome of these patients. APPROACH: A multimodal system using wearable sensors for the acquisition of multiple biosignals (electrical bioimpedance of the chest for electrical impedance tomography and respiratory rate assessment, peripheral oxygen saturation, chest sounds, electrocardiography for heart rate measurement, body activity, and posture) was developed and validated in a prospective, monocentric study on 50 healthy subjects. The subjects were studied under different types of ventilation (tidal and deep breathing, forced full expiration maneuver) and during increased body activity and posture changes. The major goals were to assess the functionality by determining the presence and plausibility of the signals, comfort of wearing and safety of the vest. MAIN RESULTS: All intended signals were recorded. Streaming of selected signals and wireless download of complete data sets were functional. Electrical impedance tomography recordings revealed good to excellent quality of detection of ventilation-related impedance changes in 34 out of 50 participants. Respiratory and heart rates were reliably detected and generally in physiological ranges. Peripheral oxygen saturation values were unphysiologically low. The chest sound recordings did not show waveforms allowing meaningful analysis of lung sounds. Body activity and posture were correctly identified. The comfort of wearing and the vest properties were positively rated. No adverse events occurred. SIGNIFICANCE: Albeit the full functionality of the current vest design was not established, the study confirmed the feasibility of remote functional chest monitoring with a marked increase in clinically relevant information compared to existing systems.

From the design to real e-textile platforms for Rehabilitation and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases care.

In this paper is described the work done to move from the concept of a monitoring system based on a sensing textile platform to the working prototype, in the frame of two different European projects: INTERACTION and WELCOME.

Assessment of sensing fire fighters uniforms for physiological parameter measurement in harsh environment.

In the last few years, much effort has been devoted to the development of wearable sensing systems able to monitor physiological, behavioral, and environmental parameters. Less has been done on the accurate testing and assessment of this instrumentation, especially when considering devices thought to be used in harsh environments by subjects or operators performing intense physical activities. This paper presents methodology and results of the evaluation of wearable physiological sensors under these conditions. The methodology has been applied to a specific textile-based prototype, aimed at the real-time monitoring of rescuers in emergency contexts, which has been developed within a European funded project called ProeTEX. Wearable sensor measurements have been compared with the ones of suitable gold standards through Bland-Altman statistical analysis; tests were realized in controlled environments simulating typical intervention conditions, with temperatures ranging from 20 °C to 45 °C and subjects performing mild to very intense activities. This evaluation methodology demonstrated to be effective for the definition of the limits of use of wearable sensors. Furthermore, the ProeTEX prototype demonstrated to be reliable, since it produced negligible errors when used for up to 1 h in normal environmental temperature (20 °C and 35 °C) and up to 30 min in harsher environment (45 °C).

Fire fighters and rescuers monitoring through wearable sensors: The ProeTEX project.

The final generation of ProeTEX prototypes has been delivered in April 2010: it is based on two sets of sensorized garments devoted to monitor the health status of emergency operators working in harsh environments. This new release of garments shows several improvements with respect to the previous ones, and it is characterized by a major specialization to the requirements imposed by the different categories of end-users (Fire-Fighters, Civil Protection rescuers) addressed by the project. Each ProeTEX prototype is provided with a communication infrastructure allowing the real-time remote transmission of data recorded by the wearable sensors, and the presentation of such data to possible managers supervising the activities of the first line responders. After the delivery of the prototypes, an intense validation of the garments is being carried out both in laboratories, specialized in physiological measures, and in simulated fire-fighting scenarios. In such a context, this paper presents the main features characterizing the final ProeTEX prototypes and preliminary results of their laboratory assessment.

E-Textile platforms for rehabilitation.

This paper focus on SFIT platforms for rehabilitations and FES therapy. Two systems will be described, one developed to support patients during motor therapy, when they are still hospitalized, and after discharge, at home; the other is a sleeve integrating multi-electrodes patches, designed to allow FES therapy and EMG acquisition for patients affected by tremor. These examples prove that it is possible to combine fabric electrodes and biomechanical textile sensors to conceive systems where gesture recognition function can be combined with EMG detection and FES capability. These platforms can be easily used at home for daily therapy, as well as for telemedicine services.