Respiration rate is an important indicator of a person's health, and thus it is monitored when performing clinical evaluations. There are different approaches for respiration monitoring, but generally they can be classed as contact or noncontact. For contact methods, the sensing device (or part of the instrument containing it) is attached to the subject's body. For noncontact approaches the monitoring is performed by an instrument that does not make any contact with the subject. In this article a review of respiration monitoring approaches (both contact and noncontact) is provided. Concerns related to the patient's recording comfort, recording hygiene, and the accuracy of respiration rate monitoring have resulted in the development of a number of noncontact respiration monitoring approaches. A description of thermal imaging based and vision based noncontact respiration monitoring approaches we are currently developing is provided.

/pdf/respiration-rate-monitoring-methods-a-review-1ykeblev32.pdf

Respiration Rate Monitoring Methods: A Review

Heart rate measurement based on a time-lapse image.

This article presents a review of signals used for measuring physiology and activity during sleep and techniques for extracting information from these signals. We examine both clinical needs and biomedical signal processing approaches across a range of sensor types. Issues with recording and analysing the signals are discussed, together with their applicability to various clinical disorders. Both univariate and data fusion (exploiting the diverse characteristics of the primary recorded signals) approaches are discussed, together with a comparison of automated methods for analysing sleep.

/pdf/a-review-of-signals-used-in-sleep-analysis-294pytl6yh.pdf

A review of signals used in sleep analysis.

Background
Monitoring of vital parameters is an important topic in neonatal daily care. Progress in computational intelligence and medical sensors has facilitated the development of smart bedside monitors that can integrate multiple parameters into a single monitoring system. This paper describes non-contact monitoring of neonatal vital signals based on infrared thermography as a new biomedical engineering application. One signal of clinical interest is the spontaneous respiration rate of the neonate. It will be shown that the respiration rate of neonates can be monitored based on analysis of the anterior naris (nostrils) temperature profile associated with the inspiration and expiration phases successively.

/pdf/neonatal-non-contact-respiratory-monitoring-based-on-real-3wvuyhjj51.pdf

Neonatal non-contact respiratory monitoring based on real-time infrared thermography

Monitoring vital signs through unobtrusive means is a goal which has attracted a lot of attention in the past decade. This review provides a systematic and comprehensive review over the current state of the field of ambient and unobtrusive cardiorespiratory monitoring. To this end, nine different sensing modalities which have been in the focus of current research activities are covered: capacitive electrocardiography, seismo- and ballistocardiography, reflective photoplethysmography (PPG) and PPG imaging, thermography, methods relying on laser or radar for distance-based measurements, video motion analysis, as well as methods using high-frequency electromagnetic fields. Current trends in these subfields are reviewed. Moreover, we systematically analyze similarities and differences between these methods with respect to the physiological and physical effects they sense as well as the resulting implications. Finally, future research trends for the field as a whole are identified.

Ambient and Unobtrusive Cardiorespiratory Monitoring Techniques

An image sequence analysis technique was developed to evaluate posture change and respiratory rate of a subject in bed without any physical contact. Although the image sequence analysis requires many calculations, the system can perform them in real time. The system consisted of a CCD video camera and a PC equipped with a high-speed image processor. To evaluate the system, we tested it on five subjects at a nursing home. The system evaluated 99.4% of the movements of subjects during the total monitoring time (about 61 hours). The waveform was flat when the subject was out of view of the video camera. The system has the possibility of evaluating not only posture changes and respiratory rate. but also sleeping patterns.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0967-3334/22/3/401/pdf

Development of real-time image sequence analysis for evaluating posture change and respiratory rate of a subject in bed.

We develop a real time monitoring system for evaluating both frequency of posture change and respiration rate without any contact to the subject. This system detects the optical flow (apparent velocity) using a temporal-spatial local optimization method to evaluate the subject motion on a bed. The system consists of a CCD video camera, a parallel image processing board and a PC. The parallel image processing board includes 256 CPUs that calculates the optical flow of the whole image (256 × 240 pixels) within 150ms. Healthy young volunteers were participated to evaluate the system. We propose a function that includes information of respiration and body movement from the detected optical flows on the blanket area of breast. The periodic fluctuation synchronizes with the volunteer's respiration. The large peaks occur during volunteer's posture change.

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/iscie1988/14/4/14_4_173/_pdf

Yoshiaki Matsumoto

Papers

Development of real-time image sequence analysis for evaluating posture change and respiratory rate of a subject in bed.

A Real Time Monitor for Evaluating Posture Change and Respiration Rate Using Image Sequence Analysis