St. Olav’s University Hospital’s Clinic for Neurophysiology, NTNU and Novelda are cooperating in a research project to better understand how infants breathe and how it can be measured using a non-contact XeThru sensor. In the study, 40 volunteers from the Trondheim area are getting XeThru sensors into their bedrooms to monitor the infants while they sleep.
The steps in the project are:
1. Night recordings of 40 infants aged 0 to 2 years over a period of 10 nights.
2. Analyze all recordings. Determine that respiration can be detected on many infants with various age, sleeping position, bed conditions and over many nights.
3. Potentially improve breathing algorithms for infants, and investigate possibility of detecting heart rate with the same XeThru sensor recordings.
4. Comparable recordings with children admitted to St.Olavs Hospital. These children will also have hospital grade reference equipment measuring in parallel.
5. Compare XeThru respiration and possibly heart rate measurements with measurement from reference equipment.
The purpose is mainly to understand how infants breathe and prepare for medical use of XeThru’s sensors. Potential future use cases are monitoring of premature babies in incubators, monitor children with respiration diseases such as asthma or apnea, monitor children with epilepsy, create breathing stop alarms, and monitor infants’ sleep and effect of treatments.
The project is approved by The Norwegian Directorate of Health (Helsedirektoratet) and the Regional Ethical Committee for Mid-Norway (Regional Etisk Komité Midt-Norge).
The night recordings are done using the Novelda’s X4M200 Respiration Sensor, a non-contact sensor which can measure respiration rate and movements from a person at distances up to five meters. With the sensors capability to see through materials such as clothes, blankets and duvets, the recordings are done without interfering with the child’s sleep habits or the interaction between the infant and their mother, father or other caregivers.
About St. Olav’s University Hospital
St. Olav’s University Hospital is the hospital in Trondheim, Norway located at Øya. It is part of St. Olavs Hospital Trust that operates all the hospitals in Sør-Trøndelag and thus indirectly state owned. It cooperates closely with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in research and in education of medical doctors. The NTNU faculty was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2014 for their brain research.
About NTNU
The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norwegian: Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, abbreviated NTNU) is a public research university with campuses in the cities of Trondheim, Gjøvik, and Ålesund in Norway, and is the largest university in Norway. NTNU has the main national responsibility for education and research in engineering and technology, originated from Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH). In addition to engineering and natural sciences, the university offers higher education in other academic disciplines ranging from social sciences, the arts, medical and life sciences, teacher education, architecture and fine art. NTNU is well known for its close collaboration with industry.
Original Source : https://www.xethru.com/blog/posts/research-project-to-understand-respiration-of-infants