Textile-based Wearable to Monitor Heart Activity in Pediatric Population: a Pilot Study
Key finding
In 20 children (healthy and with heart disease), heart rate from the SKIIN™ textile device matched reference ECG with NRMSE of 3.8 ± 3.0% and 3.6 ± 3.7%; all participants found it non-irritating.
Abstract
Background: Cardiac monitoring for children with heart disease still employs common clinical techniques that require visits to hospital either in an ambulatory or inpatient setting. Frequent cardiac monitoring, such as heart rate monitoring, can limit children’s physical activity and quality of life. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of a textile-based device (SKIIN) in measuring heart rate (HR) in different tasks: lying down, sitting, standing, exercising, and cooling-down.
Methods: Twenty participants including healthy children and children with heart disease were included in this study. The difference between the heart rates (HR) recorded by the SKIIN was compared to a reference ECG collection by normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE). Participants completed a questionnaires on their experience wearing the textile device with additional parental feedback on the textile device collected.
Results: Participants had median age of 14 years [10-17], with body mass index: 23.1 ± 3.8 kg/m2 and body surface area: 1.70 ± 0.25 m2. The HR recorded by SKIIN and reference system significantly changes between tasks (p<0.001), while not significantly different from each other (p>0.05). The NRMSE was 3.8 ± 3.0 % and 3.6 ± 3.7 % for healthy and the heart disease groups, respectively. All participants found the textile device non-irritating and easy to wear.
Conclusions: This study provides proof of concept that HR can be robustly and conveniently monitored by smart textiles, with similar accuracy to standard of care devices.
What this proves at MyantX
Children are the hardest population to get a clean cardiac signal from, which makes this SickKids pilot a demanding test: in 20 children, heart rate from the SKIIN™ textile device matched reference ECG within about 3.6–3.8% NRMSE, and every participant found it non-irritating. It is the direct evidence behind our pediatric cardiac monitoring work and the Textile ECG claims across healthcare and maternal-infant care. Reference-matched heart-rate sensing from a garment a child will actually keep on.
Cite this paper
Nasim Montazeri Ghahjaverstan, Diana Balmer-Minnes, Behrad Taghibeyglou, Bastien Moineau, Gabriela Chaves, Milad Alizadeh-Meghrazi, Barbara Cifra, Aamir Jeewa, Azadeh Yadollahi. “Textile-based Wearable to Monitor Heart Activity in Pediatric Population: a Pilot Study.” CJC Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjcpc.2023.05.007
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