Heart Rate and Respiratory Rate Monitoring Using Seismocardiography

Vital signs monitoring is critical for healthcare. Currently, at-home vital signs monitoring is obstructed by the complicated device, unaffordable cost, and inconvenience. In this study, we develop a simultaneous heart rate and respiratory rate monitoring technique that requires only one tri-axial accelerometer placing on the sternum. We devise a signal processing technique to generate seismocardiography and respiratory vibration from the raw acceleration data; furthermore, we formulate the algorithms to compute the heart rate and respiratory rate from the processed signals. We tested the methodology on 20 young healthy adults during pre-exercise and post-exercise sitting. The accuracy of 98.3% and 97.3% are achieved in heart rate monitoring during pre-exercise and post-exercise sitting. For respiratory rate, an accuracy of 96.8% is accomplished. Given the accuracy, affordable cost and convenience, the acceleration-based technique shows great promise for at-home vital signs monitoring.Clinical relevance- Portable heart rate and respiratory rate monitoring is substantial in elevating the quality of healthcare environment.