Non-contact real-time estimation of intrapulmonary pressure and tidal volume for chronic heart failure patients

Long-term continuous patient monitoring is required in many health systems for monitoring and analytical diagnosing purposes. It has been recognized that these types of monitoring systems have shortcomings related to patient comfort and/or functionality. Non-contact monitoring systems have been developed to address some of these shortcomings. One of such systems is non-contact physiological vital signs assessments for Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) patients. This paper presents a novel pulmonary ventilation model that defines the relationship between the intrapulmonary pressure and the chest displacement. A novel intrapulmonary pressure and tidal volume estimation algorithm is also proposed. A database consisting of twenty CHF patients with New York Heart Association (NYHA) Heart Failure Classification Class II & III; whose underwent full Polysomnography (PSG) analysis for diagnosis of sleep apnea, disordered sleep, or both, was selected for the verification of the proposed model and algorithm. The proposed algorithm analyzes the non-contact sensor data and estimate the patient's intrapulmonary pressure and tidal volume. The output of the algorithm is compared with the gold-standard PSG recordings. Across all twenty CHF patients' recordings with mean recorded sleep duration of 7.76 hours, the tidal volume estimation median accuracy achieved 83.13% with a median error of 57.32 milliliters. A potential application would be non-contact continuous monitoring of intrapulmonary pressure and tidal volume during sleep in the home.