An Optical Fibre-Based Sensor for Respiratory Monitoring

Sensors

Marek Krehel¹  Michel Schmid¹  René M. Rossi¹  Luciano F. Boesel¹  Gian-Luca Bona¹ 

[1] Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, 9014 St. Gallen, Switzerland; E-Mails:

关键词: breathing monitoring;    fibre optic sensing;    respiratory rate;    medical textiles;    photonic textiles;    technical textiles;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s140713088

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.