Assessing Respiratory Activity by Using IMUs: Modeling and Validation.

This study aimed to explore novel inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based strategies to estimate respiratory parameters in healthy adults lying on a bed while breathing normally. During the experimental sessions, the kinematics of the chest wall were contemporaneously collected through both a network of 9 IMUs and a set of 45 uniformly distributed reflective markers. All inertial kinematics were analyzed to identify a minimum set of signals and IMUs whose linear combination best matched the tidal volume measured by optoelectronic plethysmography.