Actiheart monitor

[DrMekon]

Warning - hair and flesh.

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Had to shave two patches for the pads. The pads are meant to stay on for two days before you change them.

I've been lent one of these from work (I'm writing up a cohort analysis of predictors of change in energy expenditure from a trial that used these). I'm going wear it for a week that'll include a 100km audax as well as commuting. If that goes well, I'll wear it on the MK600 too. Other people who've worn them for a 21 day stretch reckon you just forget about them, and have no problem sleeping with them on. I've got it set to record HR every 30sec and it records accelerometry data at 32hz. I've been told it's where it's at for getting PAEE data in trials of behaviour change. I'm hoping it'll provide an idea of when I expend calories and when I don't. Whether it's interesting or not, at about £800 a pop, I can't see it catching on outside of research / healthcare.

The Actiheart
The Actiheart Monitor

Actiheart is a compact, chest-worn device that records heart rate, inter-beat-interval (IBI), and physical activity. Actiheart digitizes the ECG signal and determines the IBI from the R-to-R interval. Through the use of a software program, the user configures the device for data recording. At the time of configuration, the user may determine which combinations of IBI, Heart Rate, and Activity to record on board the monitor for later download. Following the recording session, the data are transferred to the computer for storage, viewing, and analysis. From the IBI recordings, the heart rate and heart rate variability parameters are calculated. Caloric expenditure can be obtained through the use of a software algorithm that combines concurrent heart rate and activity data. Actiheart is the new gold standard for measuring energy expenditure and has been validated against doubly labeled water (publication in press).
Applications

    Sports Medicine and Exercise Science: measurement of heart rate, activity, and energy expenditure
    Obesity Research: measurement of activity and energy expenditure
    Stress Monitoring: recording of heart rate and variability during sedentary periods
    Epidemiology: long-term recording of heart rate and energy expenditure in free-living environments

Actiheart and Energy Expenditure

Actiheart easily measures activity and heart rate as well as calculates energy expenditure for ambulatory activities such as bike riding, skate boarding, weight lifting, etc. Using a validated system of branched modeling**, the Actiheart uses both activity and heart rate data to calculate energy expenditure. This increases the accuracy of energy expenditure measurements over systems that use accelerometry data alone. The user has the option of selecting from daily energy expenditure or advanced energy expenditure modes.

More details here - http://www.camntech.com/cnt_actiheart.htm

[hellymedic]

They might be £800 a pop this year but might drop to £200 in a year or five, when they could well catch on.
Standard HRMs were £250 in the 90s...

[slowfen]

Wore one for a week as part of a diabetes/diet/exercise project, no problems, even coped with 90 lengths in the swimming pool. they don't always seem good at picking up the peaks, I tried maxing on it, my polar registered a higher rate.

[DrMekon]

Did you wear it in the upper or lower position? I initially put mine in the lower position, but it catches on my bib tights. Also, the pads are making my skin itchy. Really can't see myself doing 21 days with it.