Last Updated on July 25, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
According to the biosignal wireless support, research grade devices should have at least 16 bit analog to digital conversion rate.
Does it make sense for a sound card ECG device to choose a sound card with for instance 24 bit instead of16 bit? No, according to wibble from the Pine64 forum. He wrote there, he worked many years in the industry and is familiar with this subject and he knows what he is talking about. Good to know.
So 24 bit as for instance g.tec medical devices have it, but also OpenBCI boards, is not urgently necessary. But what about 10 bit as for instance the Adinstruments Equivital or 12 bit as the Schiller Medilog AR12 Plus Holter ECG device has?
This low bit rate has consequences for the smallest voltage steps which can be read with our sensor device. This is explained in the following video of the How To Electonics video:
And this most probably also has consequences for the accuracy. So 16 bit as the biosignalsplux Explorer Kit with 4-channel Bluetooth has it is fine, 24 bit as the OpenBCI Cyton and g.tec medical devices have also, but not necessary. 10 and 12 bit analog to digital conversion rate as the Equivital sensor belt, the Medilog AR12 Plus Holter ECG, and the Bitalino Biomedical toolkit have are not recommended for research applications. And to study the accuracy of heart rate monitors is a research application. We want to find out something which nobody ever has studied before, and is therefore worth it to be published in a good journal. And who wants to perform a heart rate monitor study with a Polar H10 chest strap which has an unknown bit rate? Eventually sports scientists to publish a paper in the European Journal of Applied Phyiology, but which physiologists and cardiologists will choose the Polar H10 as their reference device?