Development and wearer trial of ECG-garment with textile-based dry electrodes

[Display omitted] •Drawing balance between user comfort and fit is key in designing ECG garment.•Multi-parts construction with different materials can meet design criteria.•Knitted and embroidered textrodes in ECG garments work efficiently in non-active condition.•Design needs improvement for active condition. This paper presents the design and development process of ECG (electrocardiogram) garments using different textile-based dry electrodes and assesses their performance through wearer trials. To comply with the design criteria identified for such garments, sequences of sketches with modified design features, physical prototyping and trial with industry grade mannequin were first implemented before finalising a prototype design with three different fabrics for chest, front and back panels. ECG electrodes were configured on the chest panel individually with following two different conductive textile materials - single jersey knitted fabric and embroidery thread – to construct two different prototypes, which were wearer-trialled with a human participant. Results show that the embroidered electrodes performed better than the knitted electrodes in ECG detection in still and active conditions within the same design and construct of garment.