InnoEPOC

Spirometers are the gold stardard instruments for recording the respiratory capacity, but have three important limitations such as the contact with the patient who has to cover the nose with a clip and breathe through a mouthpiece, the limitation of a global inspection without the possibility of getting results of individual subareas, and the lack of a graphical representation of the breathing movement to visualize potentially abnormal areas in an intuitive way.

We propose to build a prototype which complements spirometers, but overcomes the abovementioned limitations, providing a better performance to measure the breathing capacity of COPD patients!.

The main features of the prototype are:

• Contactless measurement of the respiratory airflow, from the 4D topography (X,Y,Z,t) of the chest wall and abdominal surface during breathing
• Computation of the airflow globally (whole area measured) and also locally at user-selected subregions
• From the air volume and flow rate measured, calculation of common spirometric parameters in the clinical practice, either globally and locally
• Measurement of the patient's respiratory frequency
• Graphic reconstruction of the surface over time as a 4D image with pseudocolor representation
• Recording of the 4D reconstruction, air flow signal and spirometric parameters measured, to keep stored in the computer and thus allowed to be retrieved at any time in order to monitor the progress of COPD patients along time
• Spatial resolution ≈ 1mm
• Low cost
• Based on off-the-shelf commercial components (i.e. not custom made) readily available, including high-speed CCD cameras with internal memory, DLP projectors, standard optical lenses, computer, aluminum profiles for the mechanical structure, and other standard mechanical parts
• User friendly interface (GUI).

COPD is a degenerative disease that causes a progressive decrease of respiratory capacity, leading to a gradual decline in physical activity and quality of life of patients. It is one of the diseases with the greatest impact worldwide, with high rates of disability and mortality. Currently, COPD affects 10% of the people above 40 years old in our country. As far as it is a degenerative disease, medical treatments focus on slowing the progression of the disease and improving the quality of life of patients.

Why this project?

The proposed instrument will help to better assess the breathing capacity of COPD patients. Consequently, it should benefit on two issues of particular importance:
1.) Increasing the rate of early detection of the disease, which is very important as far as it is in the early stages of the disease where medical treatments are more effective and patients experience more improvements.
2.) The introduction of more personalized medical treatments both in type and dose depending on the patient's condition reported by the instrument. Also, the instrument will allow a better understanding of the patient's response to a given treatment and a better monitor of the evolution.

Who are the targets?

• People affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Associations which provides COPD patients and families with information, resources and support on COPD
• Clinicians, public and private medical institutions (hospitals, health foundations, health corporations, etc.) working with lung and COPD
• All those people and institutions that believe in biomedical research to improve the quality of life of patients
• All those people who believe in a model based on share knowledge.

The technical goal of the project is to develop a prototype based on low cost components for measuring in 4D the breathing capacity of COPD patients.

Therefore, in the short to medium term we want to design and build the instrument (hardware and software), reaching a fully operational prototype. Also within this period, we want to establish solid contacts with clinicians (pneumologists, pulmonologists, respiratory rehabilitators, etc.) who might be interested from the specifications offered by the instrument, and could collaborate with us in their statement to make a prototype as helpful as possible in the clinical practice.

Also in the short term we want to make a website to share with the internet community how the project is going by publishing text documents, images, videos, faqs, etc.

In the medium to long term we hope that the InnoEPOC prototype developed can be tested in the clinical setting through an initial pilot with COPD patients, with the collaboration of clinicians and health institutions interested. In the long term, we hope that the results of InnoEPOC will contribute to better understand the effects of COPD on the health of patients, leading to more customized medical treatments for each patient based on their health status and response to treatment, and ultimately to improve the quality and extend the life expectancy of COPD patients.

We are a research team working in the field of optical metrology (measurement of objects by light) within the Centre for Sensors, Instruments and Systems Development at the UPC (http://www.cd6.upc.edu). We are a multidisciplinary team of experts in optical engineering , electronics, mechanics and computer science. We have more than 5 years of experience in developing prototypes for 3D measurement of the human body based on active stereovision technique. Up to date we have designed and built two 3D scanning prototypes, one with a very high resolution and another with a large field, that were successfully applied to the measurement of facial wrinkles and body volumes, respectively. Currently, our interest is to evolve the technique towards the 4D (real time) while keeping the low cost, and apply it to provide innovative solutions in the biomedical field for improving the quality of life of patients, as in the case of COPD patients in this project.

Here are the members of the team that will develop the project:

• Miguel Ares (PhD), postdoctoral researcher with extensive experience in the development of 3D scanners based on active stereovision for digitizing the human body. He will be the project coordinator, and will be in charge of designing conceptually the prototype, develop the control programs for getting 4D measurements, and implement the GUI.

• Santiago Royo (PhD), professor and researcher with a wide experience in the management of research projects in optical metrology. It will support the management of InnoEPOC, providing expertise in the various stages of the project development.

• Jordi Riu, telecommunications engineer and electrical engineer. He will be mainly involved in the implementation of programs to calculate the airflow breathed and compute the spirometric parameters globally and by regions.

• Francisco Azcona, mechatronic engineer specialized in robotics. He will be responsible for doing the detailed mechanical design of the prototype.