The distinguished paper, entitled “Novel Graphene Electrode for Electromyography using Wearables based on Smart Textiles”, co-authored by Manuel Humberto Herrera Argiró, a Ph.D. student at Faculdade de Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT-UNL), Cláudia Quaresma (Professor FCT-UNL) & Hugo Plácido Silva (DBE Professor and IT researcher), was presented at the 13th Advanced Doctoral Conference On Computing, Electrical And Industrial Systems (DoCEIS), organized by FCT-UNL. 

This study shows that biofeedback increases patient proprioception in physical rehabilitation training, improving outcomes; surface Electromyography (sEMG) is particularly appealing as it enables accurate progress evaluation and instant feedback. Furthermore, extending the rehabilitation processes to patients’ homes has been shown to increase the quality of the recovery process. This led researchers to move towards telerehabilitation, however, usability remains an issue in sEMG biofeedback, mainly because of the electrode materials.

This work proposes a novel electrode, designed using a Shieldex Technik-Tex P130+B conductive fabric substrate, spray-coated with graphene to reduce the contact impedance with the skin. Experimental evaluation was performed in a population of 16 subjects with ages ranging from 20 to 50 years; results show up to 97% correlation and less than 3 dB (on average) degradation of the signal quality compared to standard pre-gelled Ag/AgCl electrodes.