Physiological Monitoring in Firefighter Ensembles: Wearable Plethysmographic Sensor Vest versus Standard Equipment

Abstract

We evaluated the accuracy of a wearable sensor vest for real-time monitoring of physiological responses to treadmill exercise. Ten subjects in standard firefighter ensembles, treadmill exercising at 50% VO(2) max, had heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR), skin temperature (T(sk)), oxygen saturation (SaO(2)), tidal volume (V(T)), and minute ventilation (V(E)) recorded concurrently by a wearable plethysmographic sensor vest and standard laboratory physiological monitoring equipment for comparison. A high degree of correlation was noted for most of the measured variables [HR (r = 0.99), RR (r = 0.98), T(sk) (r = 0.98), V(E) (r = 0.88), and SaO(2) (r = 0.79)]. V(T) (r = 0.60) had a moderate correlation, although a paired differences analysis showed a mean paired difference of -0.03 L. This mean paired difference represents a 1.92% variation for V(T). Data from the wearable sensor vest is comparable to data captured from standard laboratory physiological monitoring equipment on subjects wearing standard firefighter ensembles while exercising at a moderate work rate. This study demonstrates the accuracy of the wearable sensor technology for these physiological parameters under these conditions and suggests that it could be useful for actual field studies of firefighters in traditional firefighting gear.

Measurement Accuracy of Heart Rate and Respiratory Rate during Graded Exercise and Sustained Exercise in the Heat Using the Zephyr BioHarnessTM

“…In addition, given that moisture content on the BioHarness chest strap affects electrical impulse conduction (BioHarness ™ User Guide, Zephyr Technology Corp., Annapolis, MD,) differences in moisture (sweat) accumulation on the BioHarness chest strap during a sustained period of exercise in the heat may be responsible for some of the observed variability. Yet, the BioHarness provided reasonably accurate measurements of RR during a sustained period of exercise while showing less accurate, but comparable, results from previous studies that tested a portable plethysmographic device indicating a correlation coefficient of 0.92 (ranging from rest to running at 8.9 km·h −1 ) [18] and 0.98 (walking/running at 50 % VȮ 2max in protective clothing) [5]. It is also perhaps not surprising that lower variability for RR than HR was noted for all phases of the current study insofar as while both RR and HR increase abruptly with exercise onset [4,15], respiration follows a more gradual increase as exercise continues [4] and reaches a steady state that is related to the metabolic demands of exercise [13].…”

Research Roadmap for Smart Fire Fighting

“…Physical processes such as structural collapse, explosions, or high pressure releases also generate particles over a broad spectrum of sizes. Deleterious effects attributable to the respiratory uptake of particulate matter continue to be a subject of considerable attention and have been linked to acute and chronic outcomes, including a wide variety of cardiopulmonary diseases [24][25][26][27][28]. Of additional concern is the linkage to cumulative lifetime exposure.…”

“…Wildland fire is addressed in a subsequent section, but it is noted that extensive research has been undertaken on wireless network systems for wildland fire [10,[27][28][29], which may be pertinent to sensor packages delivered by UAVs to developing wildland fire events.…”

“…A promising approach to overcome the limitations found in numerical simulations of fires is data assimilation (DA). DA consists of integrating computer-based fire modeling with sensor technology [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. DA provides an optimized approach to overcome the barriers associated with fire complexity and human behavior barriers (i.e., complex multiphysics systems influenced by a large number of unknown or partially-known input parameters).…”

“…• A component for the video stream analysis of the cameras placed on the drones (e.g., AR.Drone [28]) to perform real-time face detection of the survivors in the field…”