Abstract
Introduction: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a progressive disease that causes long-term breathing problems. The reliable monitoring of respiratory rate (RR) is very important for the treatment and management of COPD. Based on inkjet printing technology, we have developed a stretchable and wearable sensor that can accurately measure RR on normal subjects. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive evaluation of stretchable sensors in the monitoring of RR on COPD patients. We aimed to investigate the measurement accuracy of our sensor on COPD patients. Methodology: Thirty-five patients (Mean ± SD of age: 55.25 ± 13.76 years) in different stages of COPD were recruited. The measurement accuracy of our inkjet-printed (IJPT) sensor was evaluated at different body postures (i.e., standing, sitting at 90°, and lying at 45°) on COPD patients. The RR recorded by the IJPT sensor was compared with that recorded by the reference e-Health sensor using paired T-test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Analysis of variation (ANOVA) was performed to investigate if there was any significant effect of individual difference or posture on the measurement error. Statistical significance was defined as p-value less than 0.05. Results: There was no significant difference between the RR measurements collected by the IJPT sensor and the e-Health reference sensor overall and in three postures (p > 0.05 in paired T-tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests). The sitting posture had the least measurement error of −0.0542 ± 1.451 bpm. There was no significant effect of posture or individual difference on the measurement error or relative measurement error (p > 0.05 in ANOVA). Conclusion: The IJPT sensor can accurately measure the RR of COPD patients at different body postures, which provides the possibility for reliable monitoring of RR on COPD patients.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-11-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3390/s21020468
Funding Information
This research was funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering under grant Ref. IAPP1R2\100204. The work of Fei Chen was supported by High-level University Fund G02236002 of Southern University of Science and Technology.
Repository Citation
Al-Halhouli, Ala'Aldeen; Al-Ghussain, Loiy; Khallouf, Osama; Rabadi, Alexander; Alawadi, Jafar; Liu, Haipeng; Oweidat, Khaled Al; Chen, Fei; and Zheng, Dingchang, "Clinical Evaluation of Respiratory Rate Measurements on COPD (Male) Patients Using Wearable Inkjet-Printed Sensor" (2021). Mechanical Engineering Graduate Research. 4.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/me_gradpub/4
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Sensors v. 21, issue 2, 468.
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).