Wearable Sensors for Cardiorespiratory Monitoring: From Design to Data Analysis
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:
- The use of a finite element analysis to optimize the structural design of the sensor to enhance its performance in strain sensing.
- A description of the main fabrication phases necessary for developing the modeled flexible sensor.
- A description of experimental setups and protocols required to characterize the metrological properties of the fabricated sensor.
- An exploration of the key data analysis techniques used to estimate cardiorespiratory parameters from the raw signal recorded by the developed flexible wearable sensor.
Instructor
Daniela Lo Presti
Daniela Lo Presti earned her Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2014, and her Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. in Science and Engineering for Humans and the Environment from University Campus Bio-Medico of Rome (UCBM) in 2016 and 2021, respectively. She is currently Assistant Professor at UCBM and coordinator of courses in the Master's degree program in Intelligent Systems Engineering (Smart Sensing and Measurements), Chemical Engineering for Sustainable Development (Sensors and Measurements in Environmental Monitoring), and the Bachelor's degree program in Industrial Engineering (Techniques for vital
signs monitoring: from design to signal analysis).
In 2020, she spent a visiting period at the Department of Bioengineering at the Imperial College London.
She is a member of the IEEE society and various IEEE communities: IEEE Young Professionals, IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement society, and IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology society. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Best PhD Thesis Award 2021 from Sensors MDPI for her dissertation "Wearables based on fiber Bragg grating sensors for application in Smart Healthcare: from design to test."
Her main research interests include the design, fabrication and feasibility assessment of measuring systems including wearable devices and flexible sensors for monitoring human health in terms of cardiorespiratory parameters and joint kinematics and, recently, plant health in terms of growth and microclimate changes.
Publication Year: 2024