title: Novel concept for a noninvasive cardiopulmonary monitor for infants: a pair of pajamas with an integrated sensor module.
abstract: We present a noninvasive cardiopulmonary monitor for use in infants in which sensors are incorporated into conventional pajamas. It consists of dry electrodes for picking up the electrocardiogram and of two capacitive based elastic strain gauges for the measurement of thoracic and abdominal respiratory movements. The quality of the signals was assessed by performing at home seven sleep recordings in parallel with a conventional system and 16 overnight sleep recordings. In the former tests, the acquisition of all mean R-R intervals agreed in both systems with an accuracy of 15.6 ms, determined by the sampling frequency of the commercial system. For the overnight recordings, more than 99% of the R peaks were correctly detected. In 1.5%, both respiratory traces were simultaneously out of range. Finally, it was observed that more saturated episodes and less errors in R-peak detection appeared in prone than in supine position. In summary, these results demonstrated that the dry electrodes can be a good alternative to the sticking electrodes, and that this simple system is reliable. In contrast with the existing monitors, skin irritations are avoided, redundancy of respiratory signals is provided and user-friendliness of the system is reached.
authors.affiliation: Space Physiology, Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Porz-Wahnheide - Linder Höhe, D-51147 Köln, Germany. veroniquegramse@aol.com
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gramse
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: De Groote
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Paiva
mesh_terms: D003020:Clothing; D015716:Electrocardiography, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D004566:Electrodes; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008904:Miniaturization; D018670:Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D010992:Plethysmography, Impedance / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology; D014159:Transducers