Detecting variations of blood volume shift due to heart beat from respiratory inductive plethysmography measurements in man

The simultaneous study of the cardiac and respiratory activities and their interactions is of great physiological and clinical interest. For this purpose, we want to investigate if respiratory inductive plethysmography (RIP) can be used for cardiac functional exploration. We propose a system, based on RIP technology and time-scale approaches of signal processing, for the extraction of cardiac information. This study focuses on the monitoring of blood volume shift due to heart beat, noted ▵Vtr_c and investigates RIP for the detection of ▵Vtr_c variations by comparison to stroke volume (SV) variations estimated by impedance cardiography (IMP). We proposed a specific respiratory protocol assumed to induce significant variations of the SV. Fifteen healthy volunteers in the seated and supine positions were asked to alternate rest respiration and maneuvers, consisting in blowing into a manometer. A multi-step treatment including a variant of empirical mode decomposition was applied on RIP signals to extract cardiac volume signals and estimate beat-to-beat ▵Vtr_c. These were averaged in quasi-stationary states at rest and during the respiratory maneuvers, and analysed in view of SV estimations from IMP signals simultaneously acquired. Correlation and statistical tests over the data show that RIP can be used to detect variations of the cardiac blood shift in healthy young subjects.