Respiratory monitoring using an air-mattress system

This paper describes a non-invasive respiratory monitoring system using an air mattress. The air-mattress system features multiple air compartments to monitor movements of the thorax and the abdomen separately. To evaluate th e performance of the air-mattress system, foul subjects were selected for t he study and their separate ribcage and abdominal movements were monitored simultaneously by respiratory inductive phlethysmography belts and the air- mattress system. The sensitivity and accuracy indices of the air-mattress s ystem for the detection of hypopnoeas scored remarkably well (above 90%). I n addition, it was noted that the mean error in the measurement of the resp iratory rate between the two systems was very small. This paper shows that the air-mattress system can be a reliable non-invasive respiratory monitori ng system to detect simple abnormalities in breathing, such as respiration rate and hypopnoeas.