Which heart rate monitor accuracy validation paper would be currently of interest?

Last Updated on December 13, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

We have reviewed a lot about optical heart rate monitors and ECG devices and their accuracy in recent years. But during this time no accuracy validation papers have been published about heart rate monitors which stroke us:

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

Exept for the validation paper about 3 channel OpenBCI and heart rate variablity. One of the most interesting papers for us personally is still this paper published from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio with accuracy tests on a treadmill:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6732081/

This papers is a validation paper which tested consumer grade heart rate monitors against a medical grade ECG device. Since it has been published in 2019 new devices have come onto the market such as the Polar H10, the Apple watch 9 and OpenBCI 3 channel ECG has been validated for heart rate variability but not for heart rate accuracy.

A validation paper which would be intersting for us personally would be to use the testing protocol which was used in the above paper with a treadmill and speeds up to 15 km/h. At higher speeds we suppose that ECG motion artifacts will occurr with ECG devices. But to have accuracy validation data of a Apple watch 9, a Polar H10, an OpenBCI 3 channel Cyton tested against a medical or research grade ECG on a treadmill with speeds up to 15 km/h would answer many of the open questions we have.

We suppose that such a validation paper would result in the finding that a 3 channel ECG device based on OpenBCI is a low-cost high-quality ECG device which can be used instead of an expensive medical or research grade ECG device for runs on a treadmill up to about 15 km/h.

Such a validation paper with these heart rate monitors would answer which device is the most accurate device for the lowest costs. And if OpenBCI 3 channel ECG would be validated with the above protocol it would be suitable to be used for exercise stress treadmill tests similar to those done with the Bruce protocol. And we would have an ECG device for treadmills which costs much less than the devices which are sold by GE Healthcare, Schiller or Quinton. Devices for stress tests with the Bruce protocol use 12 channel ECG devices. But if accuracy only matters 3 channel ECG devices should be sufficient to reach the maximal possible accuracy.