Wearable Cardiorespiratory Monitoring System for Unobtrusive Free-Living Energy Expenditure Tracking

In this work, we want to introduce combined heart rate and respiration monitoring for more accurate energy expenditure tracking on free-living subjects. We have developed a wearable cardiorespiratory monitoring system with unobtrusive heart rate measurement and ventilation estimation function for this purpose. The system is based on a garment with integrated textile electrodes for one-lead electrocardiogram and impedance pneumography measurements. A pilot experiment has been performed to prove the concept and to evaluate the characteristics of heart rate and ventilation estimated by our system in relation to energy expenditure. In the experiment, ventilation shows a better linearity in relation to the energy expenditure at the low intensity region than heart rate. Based on these characteristics, a model combining heart rate and ventilation for energy expenditure estimation is proposed which shows a significantly lower estimation error than the heart rate only model.