The effect of measurement trends in belt breathing sensors

Sensors for respiratory monitoring can be classified into wearable and non-wearable systems. Wearable sensors can be worn in several positions, the chest being one of the most effective. In this paper, we have studied the performance of a new piezoresistive breathing sensing system to be worn on the chest with a belt. One of the main problems of belt-attached sensing systems is that they present trends in measurements due to subject movements or differences in subject constitution. These trends affect sensor performance. To mitigate them, it is possible to post-process the data to remove trends in measurements, but relevant data from the respiration signal may be lost. In this study, two different detrending methods are applied to respiration signals. After conducting an ex-perimental study with 21 subjects who breathed in different positions with a chest piezoresistive sensor attached to a belt, detrending method 2 proved to be better at improving quality of respiration signals.