Estimation of respiratory waveform using an accelerometer

The cardiorespiratory signal is a fundamental vital sign to assess a person´s health. Additionally, the cardio-respiratory signal gives a great deal of information to healthcare providers wishing to monitor healthy individuals. This paper proposes a method to detect the respiratory waveform from an accelerometer strapped onto the chest. A system was designed and several experiments were conducted on volunteers. The acquisition is performed in different status: normal, apnea, deep breathing and also in different postures: vertical (sitting, standing) or horizontal (lying down). This method could therefore be suitable for automatic identification of some respiratory malfunction, for example during the obstructive apnea.