Development of Nasal-cavity- and Abdomen-attached Fiber-optic Respiration Sensors

School of Biomedical Engineering, College of Biomedical & Health Science,Research Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Konkuk University, Chungju 380-701(Received 5 January 2010, in final form 7 July 2010)In this study, we fabricated two types of optical-fiber-based sensors for non-invasive respiratorymonitoring. A nasal-cavity-attached respiration sensor can measure the temperature variations ofairflow by using a silver-halide optical fiber located in the nasal-cavity, and an abdomen-attachedrespiration sensor can measure the changes in the abdominal circumference by using a plastic opticalfiber. We measured the modulated light beams that are guided to the detectors via optical fibersdue to the airflow and to the abdominal movement. In addition, the respiration signals from thefiber-optic respiration sensors are compared with those from the BIOPAC