title: A novel wearable apnea dive computer for continuous plethysmographic monitoring of oxygen saturation and heart rate.
abstract: We describe the development of a novel wrist-mounted apnea dive computer. The device is able to measure and display transcutaneous oxygen saturation, heart rate, plethysmographic pulse waveform, depth, time and temperature during breath-hold dives. All measurements are stored in an external memory chip. The data-processing software reads from the chip and writes the processed data into a comma-separated values file which can be analysed by applications such as Microsoft Excel™ or Open Office™. The housing is waterproof and pressure-resistant to more than 20 bar (2.026 MPa) (breath-hold divers have already exceeded 200 metres' sea water depth). It is compact, lightweight, has low power requirements and is easy to use.
authors.affiliation: Postgraduate research student, RETIS Laboratory, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, - responsible for assembly, implementation and testing, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy, Phone: +39-(0)50-549-2010, Fax: +39-(0)50-882-003, E-mail: b.kuch@sssup.it.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kuch
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Koss
authors.forename: Zeljko
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Dujic
authors.forename: Giorgio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Buttazzo
authors.forename: Arne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sieber