Chest-scale self-compensated epidermal electronics for standard 6-precordial-lead ECG

Abstract Six chest leads are the standardized clinical devices of diagnosing cardiac diseases. Emerging epidermal electronics technology shift the dangling wires and bulky devices to imperceptible wearing, achieving both comfortable experience and high-fidelity measuring. Extending small areas of current epidermal electronics to the chest scale requires eliminating interference from long epidermal interconnects and rendering the data acquisition (DAQ) portable. Herein, we developed a chest-scale epidermal electronic system (EES) for standard precordial-lead ECG and hydration monitoring, including the only μm-thick substrate-free epidermal sensing module and the soft wireless DAQ module. An electrical compensation strategy using double channels within the DAQ module and epidermal compensated branches (ECB) is proposed to eliminate unwanted signals from the long epidermal interconnects and to achieve the desired ECG. In this way, the EES works stably and precisely under different levels of exercise. Patients with sinus arrhythmias have been tested, demonstrating the prospect of EES in cardiac diseases.