Characterization of the respiratory and heart beat signal from an air pressure-based ballistocardiographic setup

Off-body detection of respiratory and cardiac activity presents an enormous opportunity for general health, stress and sleep quality monitoring. The presented setup detects the mechanical activity of both heart and lungs by measuring pressure difference fluctuations between two air volumes underneath the chest area of the subject. The registered signals were characterized over four different sleep postures, three different base air pressures within the air volumes and three different mattress top layer materials. Highest signal strength was detected in prone posture for both the respiratory and heart beat signal. Respiratory signal strength was the lowest in supine posture, while heart beat signal strength was lowest for right lateral. Heart beat cycle variability was highest in prone and lowest in supine posture. Increasing the base air pressure caused a reduction in signal amplitude for both the respiratory and the heart beat signal. A visco-elastic poly-urethane foam top layer had significantly higher respiration amplitude compared to high resilient poly-urethane foam and latex foam. For the heart beat signal, differences between the top layers were small. The authors conclude that, while the influence of the mattress top layer material is small, the base air pressure can be tuned for optimal mechanical transmission from heart and lungs towards the registration setup.