Design and Feasibility Assessment of a Magnetic Resonance-Compatible Smart Textile Based on Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors for Respiratory Monitoring

Comfortable and easy to wear systems are gaining popularity for monitoring physiological parameters. Among others, smart textiles based on fiber optic sensors have shown promising results for respiratory monitoring and applications in magnetic resonance (MR) environment. The aim of this paper was to design, fabricate, and assess on healthy volunteers a smart textile based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors for respiratory monitoring. The new design was driven by the chest wall kinematics analysis performed by a marked-based motion capture system. The proposed textile shows promising performances for the non-intrusive monitoring of both compartmental and global volumetric parameters over time. Moreover, the use of FBGs makes the system MR-compatible. This feature was tested on two volunteers. The system did neither cause any image artifacts nor discomfort to the volunteers. This promising result encourages future developments to investigate the feasibility of the proposed smart textile for long-term observation of respiratory parameters, for patients monitoring during MR scan, and during sport activities in athletes.