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Updated: Jul 2, 2025

Measuring Cardiac Autonomic Nervous System ANS Activity in Children
Published on: April 29, 2013
Development and Calibration of a PATCH Device for Monitoring Children's Heart Rate and Acceleration
Bridget Armstrong1, R Glenn Weaver1, Jonas McAninch2
1Department of Exercise Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
Introduction:
Current wearables that collect heart rate and acceleration were not designed for children and/or do not allow access to raw signals, making them fundamentally unverifiable. This study describes the creation and calibration of an open-source multichannel platform (PATCH) designed to measure heart rate and acceleration in children ages 3-8 yr.
Methods:
Children (N = 63; mean age, 6.3 yr) participated in a 45-min protocol ranging in intensities from sedentary to vigorous activity. Actiheart-5 was used as a comparison measure. We calculated mean bias, mean absolute error (MAE) mean absolute percent error (MA%E), Pearson correlations, and Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC).
Results:
Mean bias between PATCH and Actiheart heart rate was 2.26 bpm, MAE was 6.67 bpm, and M%E was 5.99%. The correlation between PATCH and Actiheart heart rate was 0.89, and CCC was 0.88. For acceleration, mean bias was 1.16 mg and MAE was 12.24 mg. The correlation between PATCH and Actiheart was 0.96, and CCC was 0.95.
Conclusions:
The PATCH demonstrated clinically acceptable accuracies to measure heart rate and acceleration compared with a research-grade device.
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