Chest wall motion analysis in healthy volunteers and adults with cystic fibrosis using a novel Kinect-based motion tracking system.

James M Harte,Mark A Williams,Edward F Nash,Theodoros N Arvanitis,Christopher K Golby,Ercihan Kiraci,Johanna Acosta,Babu Naidu

doi:10.1007/s11517-015-1433-1

Abstract

Respiratory disease is the leading cause of death in the UK. Methods for assessing pulmonary function and chest wall movement are essential for accurate diagnosis, as well as monitoring response to treatment, operative procedures and rehabilitation. Despite this, there is a lack of low-cost devices for rapid assessment. Spirometry is used to measure air flow expired, but cannot infer or directly measure full chest wall motion. This paper presents the development of a low-cost chest wall motion assessment system. The prototype was developed using four Microsoft Kinect sensors to create a 3D time-varying representation of a patient’s torso. An evaluation of the system in two phases is also presented. Initially, static volume of a resuscitation mannequin with that of a Nikon laser scanner is performed. This showed the system has slight underprediction of 0.441 %. Next, a dynamic analysis through the comparison of results from the prototype and a spirometer in nine cystic fibrosis patients and thirteen healthy subjects was performed. This showed an agreement with correlation coefficients above 0.8656 in all participants. The system shows promise as a method for assessing respiratory disease in a cost-effective and timely manner. Further work must now be performed to develop the prototype and provide further evaluations.

Highlights

Respiratory disease, including lung cancer, is the leading cause of death in the UK, accounting for 920,000 disability-adjusted life years lost [10]
Spirometry allows for the measurement of expired airflow from the lungs, enabling physicians to better characterise the cause of breathlessness and to assess progression of respiratory disease over time
This paper reports the development of a low-cost and time-effective novel prototype for capturing dynamic chest wall motion using four Microsoft Kinect sensors

Summary

Introduction

Respiratory disease, including lung cancer, is the leading cause of death in the UK, accounting for 920,000 disability-adjusted life years lost [10]. Forced spirometric efforts allow assessment of initial diaphragm/muscle strength and can only measure total airflow in and out of the lungs; it provides a limited amount of feedback and does not allow physicians to identify motion at the chest and the relative contribution of different areas of each lung to the subjects’ respiratory function [16]. This is important in subjects with more focal lung abnormalities, such as emphysematous bullae, collapsed lung segments and previous surgical lung resection.

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Discussion

Conclusion