title: A continuous, wearable, and wireless heart monitor using head ballistocardiogram (BCG) and head electrocardiogram (ECG).
abstract: Continuous and wearable heart monitoring is essential for early detection and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. We demonstrate a continuous, wearable, and wireless heart monitor that is worn at the ear. The device has the form factor of a hearing aid and is wirelessly connected to a PC for data recording and analysis. With the ear as an anchoring point, the heart monitor measures the ballistocardiographic (BCG) motion of the head using a MEMS tri-axial accelerometer, which is an electrode-less method to measure heart rate. Additionally, electrocardiogram (ECG) is measured locally near the ear using a single-lead configuration. The peak timing delay between the head ECG and the head BCG, or RJ interval, can be extracted in the presence of noise using cross-correlation. The RJ interval is shown to correlate to the heart's pre-ejection period during both Valsalva and whole-body tilt maneuvers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. davidhe@mit.edu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Da He
authors.forename: Eric S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Winokur
authors.forename: Charles G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Sodini
mesh_terms: D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D006257:Head; D006321:Heart / Q000502:physiology*; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000295:instrumentation*; D011846:Radio Waves