Motion Artifacts in Capacitive ECG Measurements: Reducing the Combined Effect of DC Voltages and Capacitance Changes Using an Injection Signal

Capacitive electrodes are a promising alternative to the conventional adhesive electrodes for ECG measurements. They provide more comfort to the patient when integrated in everyday objects (e.g., beds or seats) for long-term monitoring. However, the application of capacitive sensors is limited by their high sensitivity to motion artifacts. For example, motion at the body-electrode interface causes variations of the coupling capacitance which, in the presence of a dc voltage across the coupling capacitor, create strong artifacts in the measurements. The origin, relevance, and reduction of this specific and important type of artifacts are studied here. An injection signal is exploited to track the variations of the coupling capacitance in real time. This information is then used by an identification scheme to estimate the artifacts and subtract them from the measurements. The method was evaluated in simulations, lab environments, and in a real-life recording on an adult´s chest. For the type of artifact under study, a strong artifact reduction ranging from 40 dB for simulated data to 9 dB for a given real-life recording was achieved. The proposed method is automated, does not require any knowledge about the measurement system parameters, and provides an online estimate for the dc voltage across the coupling capacitor.