Development of a Breathing Monitoring System Using Fiber-Grating 3D Sensor and two Cameras

The Number of breathing problems (SDB: Sleep disordered Breathing) has increased during sleep in recent years. SDB causes serious diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, etc. Many kinds of methods to observe the breathing state are developing. However, devices that have already been commercialized and used actually in the hospitals are the contact types, which cause people to feel pain or discomfort. So, we developed a system which displays breathing movement with an indication of rough physical shape using Fiber Grating 3D sensor. This device can, in real time, monitor the body and the breathing activity. At a glance, we can recognize an abnormality in movement when there is abnormal breathing. Also we can measure quantity of volume change of a body from breathing movement quantitatively. Thus, we show that we can measure the breathing movement using this system.