Impedance plethysmography system with inertial measurement units for motion artefact reduction: Application to continuous breath activity monitoring

This paper presents an impedance plethysmography system suitable to perform a continuous monitoring of human breath activity. The problem of motion artifact is mitigated through the use of a correction technique exploiting an additional inertial sensor able to detect movements of the arms of the subject under test. The correction algorithm is based on a simple correlation technique and only requires a very brief training at the beginning of the acquisition session, with the monitored subject performing random movements in apnea condition. Application of the proposed system to a healthy adult volunteer demonstrates the potentiality of the correction algorithm, which, thanks to its extreme simplicity and low computational cost, is a suitable candidate for implementation in a low-cost and portable monitoring system.