ECG Enabled Smart Garment

Acknowledgements

Project Advisor: Tony Vandenberge

Technical Advisor: Dr. Jeff Schowalter, Dr. Michael Wakin

Video

Design Approach

Design Solution

Our final design solution includes an ECG enabled smart garment prototype along with a detailed analysis of data collected to facilitate future design iterations. This type of garment promotes heart health by continuously storing and transmitting a patient’s ECG data, allowing heart problems to be spotted early on. The smart garment prototype includes a shirt with integrated ECG wires and a portable electronic smart hub to collect and transmit sensor data. The ECG wires in the garment are connected to the smart hub with a 3.5 mm jack. The hub contains a small breadboard with electronics to collect and transmit ECG and motion data, housed in a 3D printed enclosure. 

The hub collects ECG data using a single lead analog ECG sensor. This sensor sends an analog ECG signal to an Arduino Uno microcontroller, which acts as the brains of the electronic smart hub. The data is stored alongside motion data collected by an accelerometer onto an onboard SD card. The ECG data is also transmitted via Bluetooth to a computer, where it can be plotted and visualized in real-time. 

Besides the prototype itself, our design solution also includes an analysis of data collected.

Our team explored the functionality of various forms of wireless transmission, data plotting, and different types of ECG boards.

In addition, we looked into different methods of reducing motion artifacts, or noise in the ECG signal caused by motion. We determined that a method of filtering called adaptive filtering could be very useful to reduce motion artifacts. This method of filtering involves using motion data from the user to get rid of unwanted noise, which is why the accelerometer (aka motion sensor) was added.

Next Steps

Our team was successful in having the ECG data sent via Bluetooth to a computer and sending data via Wi-Fi. The Bluetooth data can be plotted in real-time allowing the ECG signal to be visualized. ECG data sent over wifi is still real-time but the plot tends to have a major time delay.  

• Long term, Wi-Fi is preferable to Bluetooth because Bluetooth has a limited range
• Wi-Fi can send data whenever there is a Wi-Fi signal, meaning that Wi-Fi has a much greater  range than Bluetooth

For future work, the client can decide whether to stick with Bluetooth or use  Wi-Fi. The data is still sent in real-time over Wi-Fi and through some clever coding, the data can also be plotted in real-time.  

Because the final project was a proof of concept, we believe that we have been successful in developing an ECG shirt that shows the future of smart garment technology. The client must decide whether or not to make the final product medical grade. This means making the shirt FDA  and CE approved.

• By having an FDA and CE-approved ECG sensing shirt the product can be employed by medical practices to make readings and diagnose patients
• The product would be more desirable than a non-medical grade shirt but comes at the cost of increased difficulty and legal issues

The client can also choose to take the route similar to apple watches which aren’t medical-grade but still show useful health information that can lead the patient to go to a hospital to get diagnosed. 

Another opportunity for future work on the shirt involves the use of non-stick leads, instead of the current use of stick-on leads. 

• Would allow for a much more comfortable user experience
• Non-stick leads that can read ECG data as effectively as sticky leads do exist at the moment.

Since the current shirt prototype has three leads, the client can choose to design a shirt to have more leads. 

• Would give a more robust readout of the patient but also has an increase of difficulty for implementation
• By switching out the single-lead ECG chip on our proof of concept for a higher-order ECG board the number of leads can be increased

Meet the Team