Impedance cardiography
Fig. 1: Principle of Impedance cardiography.
Fig. 2: Logo of the HeartCycle project.
Contact person
Project description
Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death in the Western world. One of them is chronic heart failure (CHF) from which only in Europe more than 10 million people are suffering, and this causes high costs for treatments. Continuous monitoring of physiological parameters, such as pulse, blood pressure and body weight, which are simple to measure, should be performed by the patient himself. Thus, a worsening of his health status can be detected so that the physician can intervene early enough. An early therapy adaptation/intervention reduces therapy costs and minimizes the burden for patients.
An additional assessment of hemodynamic parameters such as cardiac output or cardiac time intervals is supposed to improve the therapy. But classical clinical methods, e.g. echocardiography, are not suitable for home monitoring. A very promising alternative is impedance cardiography.
Project goals
The objective of this project is the realization of a textile-integrated bioimpedance measuring system which allows the monitoring of hemodynamic parameters non-invasively by the patient himself at home. Therefore, among other things, the following aspects will be considered:
- Alternative electrode positions
- Combination of measurement techniques
- Computer assisted simulation of thorax models
- Algorithms for parameter estimation
- Realization of prototypes
Project partners
- Philips NL (Apptech)
- Clothing+
- Hospital Clínico San Carlos of Madrid
The research results of this project contribute to the EU project HeartCycle.