A portable dry-electrode ECG device for rapid and accurate neonatal heart rate monitoring during resuscitation

Each year, around 10% of infants globally will require resuscitation at birth. Pediatricians can use stethoscope, electrocardiogram (ECG) or pulse oximetry to determine heart rate (HR) which is used to guide resuscitation steps. HR must be acquired accurately and quickly. However, current HR detection modalities are either inaccurate or too slow. This work offers a novel infant heart rate detector (iHRD) using single-lead dry electrode ECG that can display HR accurately within the first 10 seconds of initial contact. A research ethics board approved validation study is conducted on 50 healthy newborns comparing iHRD's HR with clinical HR monitors at a community hospital. 3-minute newborn single-lead ECGs and HR are recorded, and HR is annotated every 2 seconds. Statistical HR analysis is performed to ensure iHRD's feasibility and reliability. With 2741 HR datapoints, excluding outliers, the iHRD detected HR with 94.5% accuracy with time from contact to HR display under 10 seconds. Overall, the iHRD using dry electrode single-lead ECG showed good results in providing reliable HR quickly for neonatal resuscitation efforts.