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Polyvinylidene fluoride film based nasal sensor to monitor human respiration pattern: An initial clinical study

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Abstract

Design and development of a piezoelectric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) thin film based nasal sensor to monitor human respiration pattern (RP) from each nostril simultaneously is presented in this paper. Thin film based PVDF nasal sensor is designed in a cantilever beam configuration. Two cantilevers are mounted on a spectacle frame in such a way that the air flow from each nostril impinges on this sensor causing bending of the cantilever beams. Voltage signal produced due to air flow induced dynamic piezoelectric effect produce a respective RP. A group of 23 healthy awake human subjects are studied. The RP in terms of respiratory rate (RR) and Respiratory air-flow changes/alterations obtained from the developed PVDF nasal sensor are compared with RP obtained from respiratory inductance plethysmograph (RIP) device. The mean RR of the developed nasal sensor (19.65 ± 4.1) and the RIP (19.57 ± 4.1) are found to be almost same (difference not significant, p > 0.05) with the correlation coefficient 0.96, p < 0.0001. It was observed that any change/alterations in the pattern of RIP is followed by same amount of change/alterations in the pattern of PVDF nasal sensor with k = 0.815 indicating strong agreement between the PVDF nasal sensor and RIP respiratory air-flow pattern. The developed sensor is simple in design, non-invasive, patient friendly and hence shows promising routine clinical usage. The preliminary result shows that this new method can have various applications in respiratory monitoring and diagnosis.

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Acknowledgments

Authors thank Dr. Nirmala KS, EEG and Sleep lab, M S Ramaiah Medical Collage and Hospital, Bangalore, India, for her help and advice during data collection. Authors also thank Prof. N S Murthy and Ms. Radhika, Department of Biostatistics, M S Ramaiah Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, India for their valuable inputs and kind help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India

    G. Roopa Manjunatha & K. Rajanna

  2. Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India

    D. Roy Mahapatra

  3. Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India

    M. M. Nayak

  4. Department of Chest Diseases, M. S. Ramaiah Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, 560 054, India

    Uma Maheswari Krishnaswamy

  5. Department of Neurology, M. S. Ramaiah Medical College and Hospital, Bangalore, 560 054, India

    R. Srinivasa

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  1. G. Roopa Manjunatha
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Correspondence to K. Rajanna.

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Roopa Manjunatha, G., Rajanna, K., Mahapatra, D.R. et al. Polyvinylidene fluoride film based nasal sensor to monitor human respiration pattern: An initial clinical study. J Clin Monit Comput 27, 647–657 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10877-013-9486-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10877-013-9486-x

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