Development of Unconstrained Heartbeat and Respiration Measurement System With Pneumatic Flow

The management of health through daily monitoring of heartbeat and respiration signals is of major importance for early diagnosis to prevent diseases of the respiratory and circulatory system. However, such daily health monitoring is possible only if the monitoring system is physically and psychologically noninvasive. In this paper, an unconstrained method of measuring heartbeat and respiration signals, by using a thermistor to measure the air flows from the air mattress to an air tube accompanying the subject's heartbeat and respiration, is proposed. The ratio with interference by opening and closing of a door as environmental noise was compared with that obtained by the conventional condenser microphone method. As a result, the ratios with the condenser microphone method were 26.6 +/- 4.2 dB for heartbeat and 27.8 +/- 3.0 dB for respiration, whereas with the proposed method they were 34.9 +/- 3.1 dB and 42.1 +/- 2.5 dB, respectively.