Prototyping a Wearable Bioimpedance Spectroscopy Monitoring System

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Abstract

Continuous body composition analysis provides valuable information to better monitor and manage the well-being of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), a chronic disease that primarily affects people of old age. Bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) is a reliable technique that estimates intracellular and extracellular water volumes in a patient’s extremities to monitor the fluid overload situation. While commercial BIS devices are available and reliable, they are not exactly wearable to allow continuous monitoring. Under the guidance of Professor Maggie Delano, our project aims to further the progress towards prototyping a wearable BIS device based on an existing portable device which is the product of Professor Delano’s Ph.D. dissertation. The project is two tiered: 1) design and test a printed circuit board (PCB) system for the BIS device and 2) investigate the reliability and usefulness of wearable textile electrodes in order to choose the best potential electrodes among a selection. Although further investigation is needed, our results demonstrate the following: 1) initial PCB designs are completed and some parts of the current PCB design are working as expected and 2) some conductive textile materials are potentially useful for our purpose and we suggest two of them to be used for prototyping and further investigation. These results provide a solid foundation for future progress towards a wearable and reliable BIS device that may allow better healthcare for patients with CHF.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10066/21574

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