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

心电图仪是临床医生诊断心脏病的最佳工具之一。不幸的是，它不适合长期监测，因为目前的系统使用粘合电极和笨重的电线来连接患者。近年来，人们提出了一种新的非接触式电容耦合心电技术，该技术利用电容效应来隐蔽地捕获心脏电信号。这不仅通过避免电极与皮肤的粘连大大改善了患者的舒适性，而且电极可以集成到床垫中，以便进行方便的长期监测。*该项目是两所大学的三名教授和两个行业合作伙伴，即SIG.NUM先发制人医疗保健和Spera医疗技术公司之间的合作伙伴关系。SIG.NUM拥有一个cECG原型系统，目前正在通过管理里程碑和临床试验。虽然这是患者舒适度和实现长期监测的一大进步，但已经确定了几个研究挑战，这些挑战的解决将有助于SIG.NUM开发一种非常低成本的心电。这项研究将专注于新的信号处理算法和定制集成电路，以捕获心脏的电信号，并降低设备对身体运动的敏感度。*Spera医疗技术公司正在研究与心脏病遗传标记相结合的心电信号。他们参与该项目将确保下一代非接触式系统测量的心电信号具有早期诊断心脏病所需的信号质量。*除了NSERC，该项目还得到魁北克医疗技术工业研究和创新联盟MEDTEQ的支持。*在项目过程中，6名博士生、2名MASC学生和1名博士后研究员将接受培训，以解决微电子、传感器、分布式信号处理和可印刷电路材料方面的最先进挑战。

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.