Sensor pillow system: monitoring respiration and body movement in sleep

Abstract

This paper presents "Sensor Pillow System" to measure physiological parameters in sleep without restraint to a human. The system consists of an array of pressure sensors under the pillow, a one-chip microcomputer to digitize and transmit the pressure data to a desktop computer; and the computer to count respirations and turns in sleep. This paper also presents a simple motion model which explains the change of the head pressure distribution accompanied with respiration. Based on this model, respiration count algorithms is proposed. The effectiveness of this system is experimentally shown by comparing the number of respirations and turns counted by the sensor pillow system of a medical device and a video image.