Electric field plethysmography-a simple tool for monitoring of respiratory-cardiac synchronism

A project is reviewed which applies electric field plethysmography to both respiratory and cardiac components in an equal way. Electrode positioning and signal processing are optimized in order to produce a sum-signal which finally is separated into a respiratory and a cardiac signal by means of adaptive filtering, neural networks, weighted subtraction or Fourier analysis, respectively. For the first time, the test system offers a simple tool for a precise determination of the exact synchronism between respiratory and cardiac activity.