Ambulant ECG Recording with Wet and Dry Electrodes: A Direct Comparison of two Systems

Long-term ECG monitoring has established itself as a standard cardiologic diagnostic method since it allows the detection of rare occurring arrhythmias. Conventional Holter recorders that use wet electrodes have however proven to have the restriction of limited application periods and poor wearing-comfort. Recent approaches have focused to benefiting from the extended durability of dry electrodes and modern smart textile technologies with a view to achieving convenient wearing comfort. In this paper the performance of a newly developed ECG monitoring system with dry electrodes is evaluated. An ECG has been recorded on a dry electrode system and simultaneously on the usual Holter device. The QRS detection performance results have then been compared against each other. Both well-defined short-time measurements on a bicycle ergometer and real-life long-time measurements were taken. The acquisition of a consistent good signal quality however remains a big challenge in a real-life scenario, notwithstanding the fact that no significant difference was observed from the first scenario.