All plastic optical fiber-based respiration monitoring sensor

In this study we have fabricated an all-plastic fiber based sensor that can accurately measure breathing rate. The sensor is attached using simple medical tape on the chest and can measure the movement during breathing based on intensity modulation between the input and output optical fibers. The respiratory signal of the subject during normal breathing and chest (or deep) breathing whilst in a sitting and lying posture is compared with a commercial electronic Neu-log respiratory monitoring system. Results show that the sensor works well for people sitting and lying on a bed which will be useful for bed bound patient monitoring. It is anticipated that the proposed all-plastic sensor would also open possibilities for respiratory monitoring inside special environment such as inside an MRI system or during X-ray body scans.