New signal processing, circuits and materials for robust and affordable capacitively-coupled electrocardiography

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The electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the best tools available to clinicians to diagnose heart disease. Unfortunately, it is unsuitable for long-term monitoring because present-day systems use adhesive electrodes and cumbersome wires to connect to the patient. In recent years, a new contactless capacitively-coupled ECG (cECG) technology has been proposed, which uses capacitive effects to unobtrusively capture the heart's electrical signals. Not only does this greatly improve patient comfort by avoiding the electrodes' adhesion to the skin, the electrodes can be integrated into a mattress allowing for convenient long-term monitoring. *This project is partnership between three professors across two universities and two industrial partners, namely SIG.NUM Pre-emptive Health Care and SPERA Medical Technologies. SIG.NUM has a prototype cECG system that is presently advancing through the regulatory milestones and clinical trials. Although it is a great step forward for patient comfort and enabling long-term monitoring, several research challenges have been identified whose resolution will help SIG.NUM develop a very-low-cost cECG. The research will focus on novel signal processing algorithms and custom integrated circuits to capture the heart's electrical signals and decrease the device's sensitivity to body movements. *SPERA Medical Technologies is investigating ECG signals in conjunction with genetic markers for cardiac disease. Their involvement in the project will ensure that the ECG signals measured by the next-generation of contactless system will have the signal quality needed to early diagnosis of cardiac disease.*In addition to NSERC, this project is supported by MEDTEQ, Quebec's Consortium for Industrial Research and Innovation in Medical Technology.*Over the course of the project, six PhD students, two MASc students and one post-doctoral fellow will be trained to address state-of-the art challenges in microelectronics, sensors, distributed signal processing and printable circuit materials.