Validation paper for sports heart rate monitors & low-cost high-quality ECG & EEG devices

Last Updated on November 14, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

If we compare the papers of these different devices:

Validation papers of sport heart rate monitors:

090. Review of Accuracy Studies of Consumer Grade Heart Rate Monitors: Methods, Testing Protocols, Reference Devices

Validation paper of OpenBCI Cyton for ECG:

Researchers from the University of Calgary found that a 3-lead ECG device based on the OpenBCI Cyton board can be used for HRV measurements instead of an industry-standard 3 lead ECG device from Adinstruments and costs only about 4%

Validation paper of OpenBCI Cyton 16 channel for EEG:

A Novel OpenBCI Framework for EEG-Based Neurophysiological Experiments: a Cyton 16 channel EEG headset & WIFI shield

We can see that we see that sports heart rate monitors where validated mainly for sporting activities. They are mainly not developed for medical and research applications, and only view use they for these applications. And we did not find a community of researchers who scientifically validates smartwatches on a regular basis. Which scientists want to write a paper about every new smart watch and test if the accuracy is greater then the precessor model and it turns out that it is not significantly better? Did they already test the latest Apple watches and did they find out that it is not worth writing a new paper about it?

On the other hand, there are two validation papers available for OpenBCI which validates it for ECG and EEG applications. OpenBCI has been critisized for having issues. On the other hand OpenBCI exists since about 10 years and is now validated for ECG and EEG applications. Also only few use OpenBCI for medical and research applications. But the two validation papers we mentioned are relatively new, and they are a basis for researchers and medical doctors who are looking for looking for low-cost high-quality ECG and EEG devices for their research and need validation papers for this purpose.