A new approach for non-contact, automated measurement of respiration rate using structured light

The respiration rate is one of the essential indicators of human health. Therefore, respiration rates can be used to diagnose several diseases, such as pneumonia. At medical facilities, breaths are measured by a respiration belt or manually counted by medical professionals. However, during the influenza season, hospitals and medical professionals are overloaded and easy, rapid and reliable respiration rate measurement is essential. In this study, we proposed to measure respiration rate utilizing a generated structured light pattern in 10 seconds. We used a simple web camera and mini projector. There are 18 participants (5-45 years old) were enrolled in this study. As a result, the correlation coefficient between the actual values and the experimental values was 0.91. The proposed method appears promising for non-contact, rapid, reliable respiration rate measurement.