Wearable sensor system tracks lung function for COPD patients

While chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide, monitoring the condition can be difficult. Lung function is currently assessed with techniques like spirometry, but that requires going to a clinic, training medical personnel to use the machinery, and conducting multiple tests to obtain reliable results.

Monitoring lung function in COPD patients is critical for predicting exacerbations of the disease and for promoting early intervention to prevent complications. To that end, Emokpae et al. developed a wearable acoustic system for breathing analysis that can be easily used in a patient’s home.

The team explored two wearable options: a shirt with internal pockets for the sensors and a chest strap with the sensors attached.

The multimodal device contains an acoustic sensor, or digital stethoscope, as the main component, and the system hosts an electrocardiogram monitor, thermometer, and goniometer. The goniometer, or activity sensor, tracks motion and posture to explore which body geometry produces the best lung function.

“What’s also unique about our approach is that our sensors can be networked,” said author Lloyd Emokpae. “You can have multiple of them placed around the thorax.”

The researchers quantified breathing intensity with the signal-to-noise ratio of the acoustic spectrum. The signal-to-noise correlates with a health-scale score based on questions about the patient.

“The end goal is to be able to not only get the output from our sensors but to be able to correlate that to the gold standard spirometry output,” said Emokpae.

The authors plan to conduct trials with more patients over longer time periods, with the goal of eventually predicting exacerbations of COPD.

Source: “A wearable multi-modal acoustic system for breathing analysis,” by Lloyd E. Emokpae, Roland N. Emokpae, Jr., Ese Bowry, Jaeed Bin Saif, Muntasir Mahmud, Wassila Lalouani, Mohamed Younis, and Robert L. Joyner, Jr., Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (2022). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0009487 .