Wearable Sensors for Cardiorespiratory Monitoring: From Design to Data Analysis

Abstract

The increasing need for wearable systems capable of assessing cardiorespiratory functions across diverse domains, including clinical settings and sports science, is driven by the critical importance of cardiac and respiratory parameters in detecting various health conditions and stressors. However, achieving noninvasive data collection while ensuring comfort and accuracy remains a considerable challenge. Recent advances in flexible systems and materials offer promise in addressing these challenges by introducing a new generation of wearable devices that are both more effective and comfortable.

This tutorial provides an overview of next-generation wearables tailored for monitoring cardiac and respiratory activity, particularly focusing on those based on strain sensing. It then outlines the essential steps for developing flexible wearable strain sensors capable of detecting respiratory rate and heart rate through chest wall deformation.

These steps include:

1. The use of a finite element analysis to optimize the structural design of the sensor to enhance its performance in strain sensing.
2. A description of the main fabrication phases necessary for developing the modeled flexible sensor.
3. A description of experimental setups and protocols required to characterize the metrological properties of the fabricated sensor.
4. An exploration of the key data analysis techniques used to estimate cardiorespiratory parameters from the raw signal recorded by the developed flexible wearable sensor.

Keywords

Wearables; cardiorespiratory monitoring; design optimization; data analysis techniques; hear rate monitoring; respiratory rate monitoring.

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