Realization and Technology Acceptance Test of a Wearable Cardiac Health Monitoring and Early Warning System with Multi-Channel MCGs and ECG

• Main Authors: Wen-Yen Lin, Hong-Lin Ke, Wen-Cheng Chou, Po-Cheng Chang, Tsai-Hsuan Tsai, Ming-Yih Lee
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-10-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: mechanocardiogram (MCG); smart clothes; heart failure (HF); left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF); technology acceptance model (TAM)
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/10/3538

In this work, a wearable smart clothing system for cardiac health monitoring with a multi-channel mechanocardiogram (MCG) has been developed to predict the myo-cardiac left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) function and to provide early risk warnings to the subjects. In this paper, the realization of the core of this system, i.e., the Cardiac Health Assessment and Monitoring Platform (CHAMP), with respect to its hardware, firmware, and wireless design features, is presented. The feature values from the CHAMP system have been correlated with myo-cardiac functions obtained from actual heart failure (HF) patients. The usability of this MCG-based cardiac health monitoring smart clothing system has also been evaluated with technology acceptance model (TAM) analysis and the results indicate that the subject shows a positive attitude toward using this wearable MCG-based cardiac health monitoring and early warning system.