Can Be Applied To The Family Of Non-invasive Respiratory Monitoring Methods

Recently there is increasing interest in ubiquitous healthcare that provides diagnosis or treatment at any time and in any place. In the parameters we monitored, respiratory rate, electrocardiogram (ECG), photoplethysmogram (PPG) are all crucial. Moreover, the respiration not only reflects the respiratory disease, but also has some relationship with the cardiac system. Thus, the need for a comfortably wearable system with capability to measure and wireless transmit vital signals is becoming more urgent.In this paper, we proposed a concept of "home healthcare", and combined the monitoring with the normal life. We monitored the respiratory rate in two unobtrusive manners. For the fist method, we designed a wearable respiration monitoring system. The device took advantages of a proven respiratory inductive plethysmograph (RIP) technology and a wireless body sensor networks (BSN) development platform. The BSN node board integrated an ultra low-power microprocessor (MSP430F149 from TI) and nRF905 wireless module. The resonance came out by the capacitance in the RIP electronic board and inductance in the belt. According to the change of resonance frequency, it can adaptively detect the breathing condition according to a natural expansion or a natural shrinkage of the users'bodies.For another method, we suggested a reliable algorithm to estimate respiratory rate using contactless ECG and PPG collecting from a mattres. The algorithm is based on the variations of beat morphology, especially to the peaks of ECG R wave and PPG. This method doesn't need the traditional electrodes, and doesn't contact body directly. Reducing the burden of measurement, it would be useful to provide comfortable and convenient home healthcare in the future.After the in-situ experiments, it suggested that wearable respiration monitoring system worked as intended. The algorithms to extract respiratory rate from ECG and PPG were reliable. For the diurnal monitoring, wearable method is more suitable. In the night, the contactless health-bed can be used to monitoring respiratory rate. Due to the high reliability and low cost of our designs, they were believed to meet the future demands on home-based monitoring for diagnosis of sleep disorder-related diseases.