title: Using body surface movements to study breathing.
abstract: The chest wall comprising both rib cage and abdomen moves during breathing, and when suitably calibrated this motion can be used to monitor pulmonary ventilation without the need for face-masks or mouthpieces. Such non-invasive methods of studying breathing are likely to become more widely used in the future, especially in the investigation of respiratory control and sleep-disordered breathing. This review describes the physiological basis of these measurements and examines the practical and theoretical limitations of calibration techniques based on the two degrees-of-freedom model of chest-wall motion.
mesh_terms: D000009:Abdominal Muscles / Q000502:physiology; D002138:Calibration; D006801:Humans; D008280:Magnetics; D009068:Movement; D010991:Plethysmography / Q000295:instrumentation; D012129:Respiratory Function Tests / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013909:Thorax / Q000502:physiology