Magnetic andCapacitive Monitoring ofHeartandLungActivity as an ExampleforPersonal Healthcare
Steffen K. Leonhardt, Adrian Aleksandrowicz · 2006
Thispaperprovides first experimental results on twomethodsfornon-conductive monitoring ofheartandlung activity thatbearthepotential formobileapplication ina personal healthcare scenario. Specifically, thepaperreports on thetechniques andonsomepreliminary results formagnetic bioimpedance monitoring andcapacitive ECG recording. Draw- backsandlimitations ofthese methodsaswellasfuture work toimprove these techniques arediscussed. I.INTRODUCTION Thefield Personal Healthcare isarapidly expanding areaofbiomedical engineering. Following arecent publi- cation trying todefine theterm((1)), personal healthcare devices aresmart, often wearable medical devices supporting diseased people intheir domestic environment. A.SmartDevices Thetermsmart implies somelocal computing power enabling thedevice toextract information frommeasured signals, detect artefacts, store valuable fractions ofinforma- tioninmemory,diagnose thepatients status andpossibly activate automatic alarms. Inaddition, smartsystems are connected anywhere andanytime. Inthis context, bodyarea networks (BAN)andtextile integration becomeimportant issues. Sensor fusion maygenerate addedvalue. Motion artefacts represent atypical andmajorchallenge formea- surement tasks inpersonal healthcare situations.