Towards the correlation between human hydration and the electrical activity of the heart using Electric Potential Sensors

Abstract

Dehydration has been associated with several adverse effects on health and well-being such as the progressive reduction in the ability to concentrate as well as the levels of alertness when fluid intake is restricted. Currently, hydration assessment has been performed using various methods ranging from simple clinical procedures to more complex techniques. However, most of these currently used technologies are not accurate and in some cases are extremely invasive. In this paper we propose a new methodology to assess human hydration using Electric Potential Sensing technology. It is based on measuring the electric field generated by the human body. We propose to correlate the electrical activity of the heart with different levels of human hydration. For evaluating this proof of principle the proposed methodology was assessed considering several healthy subjects. The results presented show that it is possible to assess the level of hydration by measuring changes in the electric field generated by the heart using our proposed sensor technology.