Innovative Monitoring Techniques for New Wearable Heart Monitoring Systems

PhD thesis here proposed aims to research the possibility of improving the monitoring heart activity in order to obtain a more complete status of the heart. Finally it shows how cardiac physiological variables acquirable connected with a long period acquisition and sensor integration in textile substrate for producing a wearable system which can monitoring the heart of the subject during different physical activities. This wearable system is based on a single transceiver, which must have high sensitivity, able of acquiring information about respiratory activity, heartbeat, heart apex pulse, cardiac sounds and movement profile of the heart wall. This research proposes analysis and realization of two systems based on two different principles. The first is based on a "bimodal" ultrasonic transducer and the second is based on a Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) radar. Innovative aspects are in the technologies used such as microelectronic units, in multi-signal acquisition and elaboration routines, in the sensor technique such as multi-modal transceivers and textile integration and in medical signals picture. Introducing the correlation of standard vital signals with heart mechanical information