Comparative analysis of the isovolume calibration method for non-invasive respiratory monitoring techniques based on area transduction versus circumference transduction using the connected cylinders model.

An analytical formalism developed previously to examine the robustness of the isovolume calibration technique for non-invasive respiratory monitoring devices based on measurements of torso circumference (e.g. fibre-optic respiratory plethysmography) is extended here to techniques based on area measurement (e.g. respiratory inductive plethysmography), and the results are compared. The earlier perturbation approach is adopted, and an exact method is also presented. It is demonstrated that the area-based techniques have less dependence on the cylindrical compartmental parameters of radius and height, and are independent of compartmental volume if height variations are negligible, in contrast to circumference-based techniques. It is also demonstrated that both the area- and the circumference-based techniques provide similar inferences of volume when calibrated using the isovolume method under reasonable assumptions for the dimensions of the compartments that constitute a model of the torso.