Interesting+Article

Here's an interesting article I found. Not sure if i understood correctly so you might want to check out the actual article but heres a short summary of the article.

In this study 24 subjects were observed. Half were men whose ages ranged from early twenties to late thirties and the other half were women whose ages ranged from early twenties to mid thirties. The participants tested whether the placement of the heart rate sensor, Actiheart, affected the quality of the heart rate recorded by the device. The skin of the participants was prepared in a way deemed normal. While wearing the monitor, the participants performed level walking, inclined walking, and level running on a treadmill along with a day of free living. The day of free living set a normal heart rate for the experimenters to compare the experimental values to. Two pairs of electrodes were placed on the participant’s chest one higher than the other: one pair at the level of the third intercostal space and the other below the apex of the sternum. The higher noise levels found in women could be caused by lower EKG amplitudes produced by the heart, greater resistance traveling to the electrodes, or more sources of noises such as motion artifacts. A higher percentage of subcutaneous fat could contribute to greater electrical dampening. More extraneous noise, especially during the more strenuous exercise, from motion artifacts could be caused by the type of clothing e.g. training bra. Even though in general the more vigorous exercises produced more noise, it was only significant in women. The conclusion of the study stated that the position of the electrodes below the sternum produced cleaner heart rate data than the electrodes placed above them.

Here's the citation for the article...I dont think i hyperlink would work so you probably have to type in some key words into a database. Brage, S., Brage, N., Ekelund, U., Luan, J., Franks, P. W., Froberg, K., & Wareham, N. J. (2006). Effect of combined movement and heart rate monitor placement on physical activity estimates during treadmill locomotion and free-living. [Article]. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 96(5), 517-524. doi: 10.1007/s00421-005-0112-6