Principal component analysis of chest wall movement in selected pathologies

A method is presented for assessing a compact set of parameters characteristic of respiratory system functional status. 3D movements of points in the chest wall and the volumes of chest wall compartments (pulmonary rib cage, abdominal rib cage and abdomen) are considered. The co-ordinates of these points are measured using an opto-electronic system for 3D motion analysis. Principal component analysis is applied to these data. The behaviour of the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix of the 3D co-ordinates of the points on the chest wall shows close agreement with the pathology characteristics. The same is found for the percentage of total variance explained by the principal components of the volume variations. In this case, the higher values of variance percentage explained indicate independent motions (active or passive) in the degrees of freedom of the system identified by partitioning the total volume into compartments.