Study of Electrode Locations for Joint Acquisition of Impedance- and Electro-cardiography Signals

ICG (impedance cardiography) and ECG (electrocardiography) provide important indications about functioning of the heart and of overall cardiovascular system. Measuring ICG along with ECG using wearable devices will improve the quality of health monitoring, as ICG points to important hemodynamic parameters (such as time intervals, stroke volume, cardiac output, and their variability). In this work, various electrode locations (12 different setups) have been tested for possible joint ECG & ICG data acquisition (using the same electrodes) and signal quality has been evaluated for every setup. It is shown that, while typically ICG is acquired over the whole thorax, a wrist-based joint acquisition of ECG & ICG signals can achieve acceptable signal quality and therefore can be considered in wearable sensing.