Textile-Based ECG Electrodes For Monitoring Vital signs, In firefighter's suit

Considering firefighting as a high-level risk job with annual reports indicating a drastic and significant number of severe injuries and fatalities; It is important to make operations conditions more controlled and monitored. While wearable Electronics have made their way into our daily life and even in professional fields, this study aims to first review the risks of firefighters’ jobs and how health monitoring systems relate to them and to improve controlling the conditions. Then we’ll have a review of works and efforts that are done relating to the application of monitoring systems for firefighters and discuss the long-term support, of completely textile-based monitoring systems. Next, considering developing monitoring systems and different types of vital signs including Temperature, Respiratory Rate, and Heart Rate variations are important parameters in monitoring body health, especially for firefighters; and there is a need for deeper studies. Thus, in this study as an approach to research, we focus only on ECG Monitoring which gives us respiratory and heart rate variations and is also useable to detect some cardiac diseases. For this purpose, we designed two textile-based multi-layer woven electrodes containing conductive and non-conductive yarns; Test results reveal that even our least conductive electrodes with yarns containing ۴۰% stainless steel have detectable ECG signals compared to common medical electrodes. As findings of this study, we provide stable textile electrodes that have similar ECG signals to common medical ones. This textile-based approach can be used in further efforts on this matter to develop its applications.

Keywords:

e-textiles , firefighters vital signs , textile-based electrodes , electrocardiography