Novel electrode configuration for highly linear impedance pneumography

Published in Biomedical Engineering 2013

Authors Ville-Pekka Seppä, Jari Hyttinen, Marko Uitto, Wojciech Chrapek and Jari Viik

Impedance pneumography (IP) is a non-invasive respiration measurement technique. Emerging applications of IP in respiratory medicine use the measured signal to monitor pulmonary flow and volume parameters related to airway obstruction during tidal breathing (TB). This requires a high impedance change to lung volume change linearity. Four potential electrode configurations were tested on 10 healthy subjects. Only the novel configuration where the electrodes were placed in both the thorax and the arms yielded a highly linear deltaZ/deltaV in all subjects. The presented electrode configuration may expand the clinical use of IP from the conventional tidal volume estimation to flow measurement.