Abstract
Bioimpedance monitoring provides a non-invasive,
safe and affordable opportunity to monitor total body water for a wide
range of clinical applications. However, the measurement is susceptible
to variations in posture and movement. Existing devices do not account
for the variations and are therefore unsuitable to perform continuous
measurements to depict trend changes. We developed a wearable
bioimpedance monitoring system with embedded real-time posture detection
using a distributed accelerometer network. We tested the device on 14
healthy volunteers following a standardized protocol of posture change
and compared the obtained measurements with an existing commercial
device. The impedance measured with both systems had a high correlation
(r>0.98) and a Bland-Altman analysis revealed a bias of
-4.5 and limits of agreement of -30 and 21. Context-awareness was
achieved with processing accelerometer data placed at the upper and
lower leg with an accuracy >95%. The calculated current
consumption is as low as 10 mA during continuous measurement operation,
suggesting that without recharge the system can be used for multiple
days. The proposed motion-aware design will enable the measurement of
relevant bioimpedance parameters continuously over long periods and aid
in informed clinical decision making.