Modeling Human Respiratory Impedance

A proposed model of the human respiratory system is described and analyzed in this article. Impulse oscillometry data were used to obtain parameter estimates for this and four well-known models of the respiratory system in order to gauge its fidelity. Of these five models, the proposed extended Resistance-Inductance-Capacitance (RIC) model ranked in the middle in terms of magnitude of modeling error for our data sets of adult and child subjects with various obstructive and restrictive lung disorders as well as normal adult and child subjects with no identifiable respiratory disease; but other factors in its favor were determined. In addition, an analysis of this proposed model’s parameter estimates for ill and healthy subjects’data, and its support for the observed strong correlation between the frequency-dependence of respiratory resistance at low frequencies with the magnitude of the low-frequency respiratory reactance area, are presented.