An optical fibre-based sensor for respiratory monitoring.
Marek Krehel, Michel Schmid, René M Rossi, Luciano F Boesel, Gian-Luca Bona, Lukas J Scherer
Author Information
Marek Krehel: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland. marek.krehel@empa.ch.
Michel Schmid: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland. michel.schmid@empa.ch.
René M Rossi: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland. rene.rossi@empa.ch.
Luciano F Boesel: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland. Luciano.Boesel@empa.ch.
Gian-Luca Bona: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland. gian-luca.bona@empa.ch.
Lukas J Scherer: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland. lukas.scherer@empa.ch.
In this paper, a textile-based respiratory sensing system is presented. Highly flexible polymeric optical fibres (POFs) that react to applied pressure were integrated into a carrier fabric to form a wearable sensing system. After the evaluation of different optical fibres, different setups were compared. To demonstrate the feasibility of such a wearable sensor, the setup featuring the best performance was placed on the human torso, and thus it was possible to measure the respiratory rate. Furthermore, we show that such a wearable system enables to keep track of the way of breathing (diaphragmatic, upper costal and mixed) when the sensor is placed at different positions of the torso. A comparison of the results with the output of some commercial respiratory measurements devices confirmed the utility of such a monitoring device.
References
Opt Express. 2008 Aug 18;16(17):12973-86
[PMID: 18711536]
