Comparing Dry Electrode Materials for Long-term ECG Monitoring - Evaluation of a New Method.

Studies prove, that ECG monitoring over longer periods of time can significantly improve the diagnosis of heart failure. Dry electrodes are a valuable alternative to conventional wet electrodes, if the monitoring period is longer than one week, because they are more stable and cause less skin irritations. One drawback however is the minor signal quality compared to wet electrodes. As there are different electrode materials for dry electrodes available, a qualitative comparison concerning signal quality is carried out in this work. The signal quality of well known dry-electrode-materials used in fitness-heart belts are compared with metal dry electrodes. All electrodes are assembled in an identical mechanical electrode-setup. A parcours-based field trial with 13 subjects is carried out in two stages. In order to estimate the reproducibility of the parcours, the first stage is used to benchmark the differences in signal quality of consecutive measurements not originating from the electrode material. In the second stage however, the actual measurement takes place. The accuracy of the method is presented and the comparison results are discussed.