Sensorized T-Shirt with Intarsia-Knitted Conductive Textile Integrated Interconnections: Performance Assessment of Cardiac Measurements during Daily Living Activities

Abstract

The development of smart wearable solutions for monitoring daily life health status is increasingly popular, with chest straps and wristbands being predominant. This study introduces a novel sensorized T-shirt design with textile electrodes connected via a knitting technique to a Movesense device. We aimed to investigate the impact of stationary and movement actions on electrocardiography (ECG) and heart rate (HR) measurements using our sensorized T-shirt. Various activities of daily living (ADLs), including sitting, standing, walking, and mopping, were evaluated by comparing our T-shirt with a commercial chest strap. Our findings demonstrate measurement equivalence across ADLs, regardless of the sensing approach. By comparing ECG and HR measurements, we gained valuable insights into the influence of physical activity on sensorized T-shirt development for monitoring. Notably, the ECG signals exhibited remarkable similarity between our sensorized T-shirt and the chest strap, with closely aligned HR distributions during both stationary and movement actions. The average mean absolute percentage error was below 3%, affirming the agreement between the two solutions. These findings underscore the robustness and accuracy of our sensorized T-shirt in monitoring ECG and HR during diverse ADLs, emphasizing the significance of considering physical activity in cardiovascular monitoring research and the development of personal health applications.