title: Spatiotemporal reconstruction of the breathing function.
abstract: Breathing waveform extracted via nasal thermistor is the most common method to study respiratory function in sleep studies. In essence, this is a temporal waveform of mean temperatures in the nostril region that at every time step collapses two-dimensional data into a single point. Hence, spatial heat distribution in the nostrils is lost along with valuable functional and anatomical cues. This article presents the construction and experimental validation of a spatiotemporal profile for the breathing function via thermal imaging of the nostrils. The method models nasal airflow advection by using a front-propagating level set algorithm with optimal parameter selection. It is the first time that the full two-dimensional advantage of thermal imaging is brought to the fore in breathing computation. This new multi-dimensional measure is likely to bring diagnostic value in sleep studies and beyond.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77024, USA. dcduong@cs.uh.edu
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Duong
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shastri
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tsiamyrtzis
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pavlidis
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009296:Nasal Cavity / Q000502:physiology; D009666:Nose / Q000502:physiology; D012119:Respiration; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D012890:Sleep; D013997:Time Factors