WEARPLEX at Vienna International Workshop on FES 2019 - Special Session
The WEARPLEX project presents their work at an invited Special Session at the 13th Vienna International Workshop - 23rd September 2019
The event was held in collaboration with the 13th Functional Electric Stimulation workshop in Vienna on the 23-25th of September 2019. The reason for this workshop was to showcase to the FES community the potential of the WEARPLEX project and the initial results of the collaboration to achieve the Alpha prototypes. The first workshop of the project was targeted towards the clinical aspect of the project to attract key stakeholders in the field, the clinicians and researcher who can attain the most benefit from the final WEARPLEX technology.
The organizing committee of the conference were very interested in our work and invited us to provide a special session on the project and the underlying technologies. We showed 10 presentations, introducing the project and then discussing the different aspects of the project. The talks are shown in the table below and can be downloaded.
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Presenter |
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INTRODUCTION OF EU-H2020 PROJECT WEARPLEX – WEARABLE MULTIPLEXED BIOMEDICAL ELECTRODES |
Milos Kostic |
TEC |
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This was the introductory presentation that set the scene for the following talks which focused on specific technologies and expertise of each consortium member. The audience was introduced with the WEARPLEX concept and vision, as well as the profiles of consortium members and their roles in the project. The talk was more oriented towards the domain of electrical simulation than the technological background of WEARPLEX, as the conference itself was consisting of “users” rather than technological providers for WEARPLEX. The aim was to provide the context allow the audience to fully appreciate the need for proposed technological advancements and to perceive the connections between the project and their own fields of interest. |
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PRINTED ELECTRODE STRUCTURES FOR BIO-POTENTIAL MONITORING IN WEARABLE E-TEXTILE GARMENTS |
Russel Torah |
UoS |
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This presentation covered the background work on printed e-textiles pioneered at the University of Southampton. It described the concept of the printed ‘interface’ layer which reduced the surface roughness of a fabric, allowing it to be used for subsequently printing electronics. It also covered the work we have done on printed bio-potential monitoring electrodes (ECG, EMG, EOG, EEG) and our work on functional electrical stimulation sleeves which led to our involvement in WEARPLEX. |
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CLASS: PLATFORM FOR STIMULATION AND RECORDING VIA WEARABLE MULTIPLEXED ELECTRODES |
Thierry Keller |
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Tecnalia presented their closed loop acquisition and stimulation system platform CLASS. The CLASS platform is a portable system that allows provision of versatile stimulation and and biosignal recording features, which allow efficient prototyping and testing of printed electrode and electronic designs. In WEARPLEX the CLASS modules are used to test new designs of multi-pad electrodes and de-multiplexor circuits in both stimulation and recording applications. Stackable stimulation modules are able to provide FES, TENS and electro-tactile feedback stimulation with controlled currents from 0.1 to 100mA (with voltages from 50 to 200V). Stackable (up to 4 modules) signal acquisition modules are made to acquire physiological signals with 2uV peak-to-peak noise. Each module allows having 16 monopolar or bipolar acquisition channels. The modules can have independent or common references. |
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CUSTOM DESIGN OF MULTI-ELECTRODE ARRAYS FOR STIMULATION AND RECORDING APPLICATIONS |
Matija Strbac |
TEC |
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The concept of multi-pad electrode was described in more detail with an overview of TEC ten-year long experience in its applications for FES. The technological leap pursued in WEARPLEX was explained focusing on the application side, specifically in the neuromuscular stimulation use-case. Different design strategies when facing various challenges were explored. All of the points were based on the examples that were shown within the presentation. |
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SCREEN PRINTED ORGANIC ELECTROCHEMICAL TRANSISTORS FOR RECORDING AND STIMULATION APPLICATIONS |
Peter Andersson Ersman |
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This presentation introduced the concept of screen printed organic electrochemical transistors (OECT) that has been developed by RISE, the integration of these devices into screen printed OECT-based circuits, and how such devices and circuits can be beneficial in stimulation and recording applications within the WEARPLEX project. This introduction also gave an overview of the state of the art of screen printed OECT-based circuitry in terms of footprint, number of integrated OECTs, etc. H bridge circuits based on OECTs have been verified; a circuit that is important in stimulation applications to enable current flow in two different directions. OECTs are typically operated at extremely low voltages, i.e., about 1 V. Due to this, the operational lifetime is currently being investigated, it is especially critical in stimulation applications due to the requirement of high voltages and high current throughput. In addition to this, a few attempts to take advantage of the OECT amplification in recording applications have also been performed, and some promising results have been obtained, even though this needs to be further verified. To further visualize the concept targeted within WEARPLEX, the demonstration of a screen printed OECT-based 2-4 decoder was presented. The decoder circuit reduces the required number of connections between the multi-pad electrode and the external electronics. In this particular demonstration, the 2-4 decoder was controlling four drive transistors that also originate from the OECT technology. The drive transistors show high current throughput that eventually will be used in stimulation applications, here visualized by switching the light emission of multiple LEDs on or off. |
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MUSCLE PATTERNS IN HIGH-DENSITY EMG RECORDED DURING GRASPING IN DIFFERENT ARM POSITIONS |
Luis Pelaez Murciego |
AAU |
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Investigating pattern recognition models that are robust against changes in limb orientation is one of the main concerns in myocontrol applications design (e.g. prosthetic control). In this talk is presented an analysis of forearm EMG in which is shown how different muscle patterns are generated for the same hand gesture when there is a change in the arm orientation. The presentation illustrated the displacement of muscular activity hotspots along the recording surface (i.e. high-density matrix electrodes). Is expected that the ability of tracking this displacement would allow to design more sophisticated models that reduce misclassification rate of hand gesture recognition in the presence of arm movements. |
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DEVELOPMENT OF NEW FUNCTIONAL INKS FOR BIO-MONITORING APPLICATIONS |
Nikola Perinka |
BCM |
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This presentation was focused on general aspects of the biomonitoring ink formulation. The main stress was put on the development of biocompatible reduced graphene oxide (rGO) based ink, based on rGO from Abalonyx. The details on the control of rheological properties for needs of inkjet printing and screen printing were explained. At the end of the presentation were shown the first prototypes of biomonitoring devices with integrated rGO printed layers in the stimulating electrodes were shown and the future prospectsof this ongoing research were discussed, as well. |
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INTEGRATION OF FLEXIBLE CIRCUITS IN TEXTILES FOR WEARABLE HEALTH MONITORING |
Abiodun Komolafe |
UoS |
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This presentation introduced the concept of the woven electronic circuits developed at the University of Southampton. It described the photolithographic manufacturing processes involved and the methods used to create the circuit designs to create the ‘strip circuits’ used in the work. Several examples of the robustness of the devices were given as well as different applications they can be used in. Finally, the motivation for using this technology in WEARPLEX and how it is a combination of risk mitigation for the printed de-multiplexing but also improved integration of the stimulation and recording electronics. |
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EXPERIENCES IN SCALE-UP MANUFACTURING OF PRINTED MEDICAL DEVICES |
Jenni Isotalo |
SCT |
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This presentation introduced the principles to scale-up manufacturing of printed electronics. It introduced what it takes to get an idea to the product and finally to the mass production. When it comes to the medical devices, the quality is very important. The more complex the product is, the more possible failure points might be in the manufacturing chain. Communication between the company and the customer is very important. Screentec has prototyping and manufacturing in-house and it makes this easier, we can see immediately if there is something that need to be changed. It saves time and money. |
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INTEGRATION OF WEARPLEX TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT OF ALPHA PROTOTYPES OF WEARPLEX ELECTRODES |
Russel Torah |
UoS
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This presentation just provided the audience with information on where to go for the WEARPLEX Alpha workshop and an overview of what we would be showing as a consortium and bringing the special session to a close. |
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