ATEM: Application of smart Textile sensors for Electrical impedance based respiratory Monitoring

Duration of the project

15.01.2017. - 15.11.2017.

Countries and institutions involved in the project

flag-LV
Riga Technical University
flag-DE
Furtwangen University of Applied Science

Aim of the project

Respiratory monitoring is intensively used in medicine. It could be used in non-medical fields as well, such as sport, fitness, singer and wind instruments players training. Spirometry provides direct measurements of breathing volume, but require measurement device to be attached to the patient mouth, that is inconvenient to patient and hospital staff and prevents spirometry to be used for continuous monitoring in non-hospital environment. A number of techniques has been developed to replace spirometry, electrical impedance tomography (EIT) being one of them. The advantage of EIT is its ability to evaluate lung volume even regionally; rendering this method functionally superior to spirometry. EIT required an array of conventional bio-potential electrodes to be attached to the patient chest. The idea of the project is to replace conventional electrodes with ones made of conductive knitted textile. Textile electrodes could be easily integrated in a patient’s underwear, such T-shirts or bodies, herewith providing wearables to perform daily respiratory monitoring in hospitals, at home, during physical activity etc. in convenient way. Preliminary study at RTU demonstrated such electrodes as being capable to measure human bio-potentials, e.g. ECG or electromyogram. The goal of the present project is to demonstrate usability of textile electrodes for EIT measurements.

Main activities of the project

  1. Preliminary information exchange on EIT technology and discussion on textile EIT system design (RTU, ITeM, Internet communication between RTU and ITeM)
  2. ITeM staff short visit to RTU. Discussions on textile EIT system design and Guest lecture / Seminar, 22.05.2017-23.05.2017 (RTU, Latvia)
  3. Development and prototyping of the textile EIT system and data acquisition module (RTU, Latvia)
  4. RTU staff short visit to ITeM. Joint experiments and Guest lecture / Seminar 12.06.2017-16.06.2017 (ITeM, Germany)
  5. Experimental data processing and analysis (RTU, ITeM, internet communication between partners)
  6. Preparation and submission of joint publication. (RTU, ITeM, internet communication between partners)
  7. Preparation of Project report (RTU, internet communications between partners)

Target group and number of persons involved

Academic personal and students of the Riga Technical University (21 person) staff of the department of the Biomedical Engineering and Nanotechnologies and Institute of Design Technology (8 persons) of the Riga Technical University

Academic personal and students of the Hochschule Furtwangen University (21 persons), and staff of the Institute of Technical Medicine (13 persons) of the Hochschule Furtwangen University