The electrically non-contacting ECG measurement on the toilet seat using the capacitively-coupled insulated electrodes.

The studies of ECG measurement on the toilet seat have been performed specifically for the ubiquitous health care. Instead of the mainly used dry electrodes having several problems such as the electrical safety or the environmental stability, we used the capacitively-coupled insulated electrodes, which were composed of the Cu plate and the PTFE film for the measurement. The biosignal sensed with the insulated electrodes was measured through the ultra-high input impedance system including OPA111 having the common mode impedance of 10/sup 14/ Omega ft. As the result of measuring the signal, with the electrical ground on the neck or the hand, the R-peaks were detected very positively. However, without the electrical ground on the body, we could detect the heartbeat signal, a land of the motion artifacts by the variation of the blood vessel volume. It seems that this heartbeat signal can be also used as the important parameter like the R-peaks for the HRV (heart rate variability) analysis. In addition, it is thought that, without the directly electrical ground, the R-peak detection will be possible by the improvement of the SNR with the active common canceling system.