The Polar H10 does not meet the requirements to be a gold standard device for heart rate measurements – why does the Swiss Federal Institute of Sports in Magglingen & Rob ter Horst ignore this fact?

Last Updated on August 20, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

Rob ter Horst uses a Polar H10 chest strap as a refernce device for his accuracy studies. Cardiologists from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio tested the accuracy of heart rate monitors:

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

They compared the accuracy of the HRM they tested to a Quinton Q-tel RMS telemetry system:

90.02 Research & medical grade ECG devices which some of those were used to study the accuracy of consumer grade HRMs in different papers

In this paper it says:

«The Mason-Likar electrode placement was used and allowed for the assessment of modified leads I, II, and III. The ECG was monitored on a Quinton Q-tel RMS telemetry system and ECG-based HR was determined by visual assessment by trained research personnel. Using a 3 lead ECG in this fashion is considered the gold standard for HR measurement«

The authors cited the following paper which made them choose this setup:

Lin LI. A concordance correlation coefficient to evaluate reproducibility. Biometrics 1989;45:255-68. 10.2307/2532051

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2720055/

The requirements for a gold standard for HR measurement are:

• a 3 lead ECG device

• The Mason-Likar electrode placement

• A trained research assistant controls the ECG based heart rate measurement, for instance a cardiolologists stands next to the treadmill and controls every single ECG peak.

But the Polar H10 chest strap is not a 3 lead ECG device, but a single lead ECG device.

The following devices are 3 lead ECG devices:

Candidate gold standard devices for RR interval assessments if intense activities with strong body movements are investigated