Heart rate detection from waist ECG/PCG sensors for a vital signal acquisition system for athletes

Recently, in order to grasp sports player´s condition, his/her supervisor/coach requests to measure sports player´s vital data like heart rate, momentum during training period and so on. To understand sports player´s condition more accurately, using in combination several kinds of vital data is efficient. However, putting on vital sensors at two or more points provides being strained on players, and it causes the different to the state without the sensors in the practice. In this paper, to measure heart rate and momentum at the same point, we´ve designed and built a prototype circuit which can capture and record ECG signal, PCG signal and blood flow variation signal concurrently. We´ve made an experiment of heart rate detection on waist part and tried to confirm feasibility of heart rate detection at waist part during sports training. The experimentally measured data have been compared to the result of a conventional heart rate monitor. The coincidence rate between the prototype and conventional results is about 95 percent and the RMSE is about 3-7. The results show that heart rate detection on waist part is potentially available.