Publication
Wearable Spirometry: Using Integrated Environment Sensor for Breath Measurement
Alejandro Baucells Costa; Bo Zhou; Orkhan Amiraslanov; Paul Lukowicz
In: NexTech 2018. International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies (UBICOMM-2018), ISBN 978-1-61208-676-7, IARIA XPS Press, 2018.
Abstract
In this work, we present and evaluate a concept for
using an integrated environment sensor as a wearable spirometer.
Unlike a standard spirometer that by design is fairly bulky, our
device can be unobtrusively integrated into various configurations
suitable for long-term use in everyday settings (open headset,
regular face mask, and professional sports mask). The sensor
measures the transient change in air pressure, humidity and
temperature in front of wearers’ mouth and nostrils. We present
our hardware design and signal analysis methods needed to
extract breathing rate information. We compare the results
with a standard spirometer. Moreover, a calibration between
the BME280 sensor and the spirometer is performed, having
both working in parallel. We show that our approach is able to
distinguish between normal breaths and deep breaths, as well as
to capture the period and magnitude of the breath cycles, with a
wearable device that can be used in everyday scenarios, as well as
sport activities. The classification accuracy is 96% in face mask
settings and 82% in an open headset setting. We also show that
the sensor is able to approximate air volume by comparing the
sensor’s pressure channel to the spirometer’s flow rate results.