Development of real time abdominal compression force monitoring and visual biofeedback system.

In this study, we developed and evaluated a system that could monitor abdominal compression force (ACF) in real time and provide a surrogating signal, even under abdominal compression. The system could also provide visual-biofeedback (VBF). The real-time ACF monitoring system developed consists of an abdominal compression device, an ACF monitoring unit and a control system including an in-house ACF management program. 
 We anticipated that ACF variation information caused by respiratory abdominal motion could be used as a respiratory surrogate signal. Four volunteers participated in this test to obtain correlation coefficients between ACF values and tidal volumes. A simulation study with another group of six volunteers was performed to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed system. In the simulation, we investigated the reproducibility of the compression setup and proposed a further enhanced shallow breathing (ESB) technique using VBF by intentionally reducing the magnitude of the breathing range under AC. 
 The correlation coefficient between the ACF variation caused by the respiratory abdominal motion and the tidal volume signal for each volunteer was evaluated and R2 values ranged from 0.79 to 0.84. The ACF values continuously changed in a waveform similar to a respiratory pattern and slight variations of ACF ranges were observed among sessions. About 73~77 % average ACF control rate (i.e., compliance) over 5 trials was observed in all volunteer subjects ...
Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology - Category: Physics Authors: Tags: Phys Med Biol Source Type: research