Ergospirometric signal processing for human breath and force measurements

Breathing plays a key role in human health, especially in terms of fatigue and energy. Oxygen maximum consumption is important for lung. Lung functional performance is characterized by: its ventilator capacity, to bring air (thus O
₂
) into alveoli, and its capacity to transfer O
₂
and CO
₂
into and from the pulmonary capillary bed. Hence, the O
₂
and CO
₂
diffusion coefficients as well as the O
₂
consumption rate and the CO
₂
production rate represent the lung performance indices. Both gases have a relevant importance in human body energy expenditure; one of the best instrumentation used for this purpose is ergospirometer. It allows to know the oxygen maximum consumption or the aerobic maximum power VO
₂
, that is the maximum amount of energy (moles of ATP) produced by different substances (carbohydrates, lipids and proteins) per unit of time. This research proposes a signal processing approach for improving the quality of data recovered from the ergospirometric sessions. The ergospirometric is used to evaluate the efficiency of walking for two main reasons: rehabilitation and cough impact on a patient before a surgery. Cough can be an index of muscular and lung problems on human body. Before a surgery, it could be necessary to discriminate some pathologies in presence of cough. The results offered by the research are characterized by a good accuracy and they help clinicians in knowing précised values of oxygen maximum consumption, hence, human body expenditure. A Cosmed K4b2, as ergospirometer, is used in this research. It is located at Research Institute.