Chest-based Real-Time Pulse and Respiration Monitoring Based on Bio-Impedance

Pulse wave and respiration are two important vital signals in diagnosing and treating diseases. In this paper, we investigated a Bio-impedance (BImp) based respiration and pulse wave monitoring system. The BImp signal is successfully extracted from a wearable device placed on the shoulder. Using the rate calculation algorithm, heart rate (HR), and respiration rate (RR) values are extracted accurately. The data is collected during different steps of breathing including slow, fast, deep, hold, and normal from 10 volunteers. The accuracy of HR results is compared to that of extracted from PPG with considering ECG based HR as reference. The extracted RR values are investigated against TCo₂ sensor's output. The estimation of both RR and HR extracted from the BImp signal has higher accuracy compared to the other methods.