Last Updated on December 17, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
A major break-trough for us personally was after we studied low-cost high-quality physiological sensor devices in recent years was the development for heart rate measurement devices. As we started to become interested in this topic optical heart rate monitors cached our attention which started with the development of Mio sensors. But there seem not to be a major break-trough for these devices to use those for scientific studies, as you can see in our review:
Watches with optical heart rate monitors have become very popular, as you can see for instance on the views on YouTube which videos of for instance DC Rainmaker or Rob ter Horst reach.
In contrast to this, we did not observe a similar development so that more scientific studies where performed with these devices, which raises the question if they are suitable for this purpose.
As we started to become interested in heart rate monitors which can be used for scientific studies, devices from Adinstruments stroke us the most. They fitted best for our needs, but their prices where very high for our home lab. Who buys a Adinstruments multi-channel recorder for 20 000 USD for his home lab?
In this respect, a major breakthrough is for us personally is that 3 channel ECG devices which are gold standard for heart rate measurements are now validated also with OpenBCI Cyton and heart rate variability, and these devices cost about 4 percent of the devices from Adinstruments:
https://www.cell.com/heliyon/pdf/S2405-8440(21)01251-2.pdf
It remains to be seen if these devices will be used for scientific studies to publish papers.