Inkjet-Printed ECG Electrodes and AI-based Data Reliability for Smart-Health CPS

Smart-health (sHealth) cyber-physical system (CPS) is a promising technology that passively collects user’s health information for actionable clinical decision and prediction of health status. CPS for sHealth integrates sensing, computation, communication, and control in unsupervised settings. In sHealth for cardiac monitoring system, reliable capture and monitoring of Electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG) signal is essential but challenging. To address the challenges, our research focuses on developing reliable, user-friendly, and economically viable solutions for interfacing and powering of CPS device and reliability of captured data from unsupervised settings using artificial intelligence (AI). Towards this goal, we have developed flexible dry ECG/EKG electrodes in various sizes and shapes on thin polyimide (PI) substrates using an additive manufacturing technique called inkjet-printing (IJP). Our developed IJP dry ECG electrodes were tested for data-collection and were compared against commercial electrodes. Furthermore, we have developed an automated data reliability metric for real-time cardiac episode monitoring towards timely, trustable, and accurate feedback of sHealth CPS. To mitigate reliability issues, we proposed an AI-based Data Reliability Metric (DReM) to estimate trustworthiness of the signal from a priori data statistics in unsupervised settings. Results show promising correlation of DReM with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Finally, we have also developed a patent-pending energy- storage solution with IJP electronics in the form of a super-capacitor. In this work, we also present the proof-of-concept results of IJP flexible super-capacitors for wearables and implantable. We have used stacked Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) parallel-plate capacitors to form this super-capacitor leading to high energy density. Overall, this research demonstrates the potential of using IJP technology for CPS interfacing with IJP ECG flexible electrodes, powering with IJP flexible super- capacitors, and improving trustworthiness of the system with DReM towards a reliable sHealth CPS.