Multimodal remote chest monitoring system with wearable sensors: a validation study in healthy subjects.

Objective: Development of wearable medical technology for remote monitoring of patients suffering from chronic lung diseases may improve the care, therapy and outcome of these patients.

Approach: A multimodal system using wearable sensors for the acquisition of multiple biosignals (electrical bioimpedance of the chest for electrical impedance tomography and respiratory rate assessment, peripheral oxygen saturation, chest sounds, electrocardiography for heart rate measurement, body activity, and posture) was developed and validated in a prospective, monocentric study on 50 healthy subjects. The subjects were studied under different types of ventilation (tidal and deep breathing, forced full expiration maneuver) and during increased body activity and posture changes.

From the design to real e-textile platforms for Rehabilitation and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases care.

In this paper is described the work done to move from the concept of a monitoring system based on a sensing textile platform to the working prototype, in the frame of two different European projects: INTERACTION and WELCOME.

Assessment of sensing fire fighters uniforms for physiological parameter measurement in harsh environment.

In the last few years, much effort has been devoted to the development of wearable sensing systems able to monitor physiological, behavioral, and environmental parameters. Less has been done on the accurate testing and assessment of this instrumentation, especially when considering devices thought to be used in harsh environments by subjects or operators performing intense physical activities. This paper presents methodology and results of the evaluation of wearable physiological sensors under these conditions.

Fire fighters and rescuers monitoring through wearable sensors: The ProeTEX project.

The final generation of ProeTEX prototypes has been delivered in April 2010: it is based on two sets of sensorized garments devoted to monitor the health status of emergency operators working in harsh environments. This new release of garments shows several improvements with respect to the previous ones, and it is characterized by a major specialization to the requirements imposed by the different categories of end-users (Fire-Fighters, Civil Protection rescuers) addressed by the project. Each ProeTEX prototype is provided with a communication infrastructure allowing the real-time remote transmission of data recorded by the wearable sensors, and the presentation of such data to possible managers supervising the activities of the first line responders.

E-Textile platforms for rehabilitation.

This paper focus on SFIT platforms for rehabilitations and FES therapy. Two systems will be described, one developed to support patients during motor therapy, when they are still hospitalized, and after discharge, at home; the other is a sleeve integrating multi-electrodes patches, designed to allow FES therapy and EMG acquisition for patients affected by tremor. These examples prove that it is possible to combine fabric electrodes and biomechanical textile sensors to conceive systems where gesture recognition function can be combined with EMG detection and FES capability.