A Piezo Transducer Based Flexible Hybrid Sensor for Health Monitoring

Flexible hybrid electronics integrate both rigid electronics and printed materials on a flexible substrate. This integration results in high performance from thin, lightweight and flexible devices. In this paper, we propose a flexible hybrid sensor as part of a respiratory monitoring system. The sensor utilizes a PZT-4 ultrasound piezo transducer to track the motion of the diaphragm, diaphragmatic pleura and chest wall in order to find the respiratory cycles. Experimental results show that the respiratory signal obtained with the sensor matches very well with the respiratory signal monitored with an SPR-BTA spirometer.