A mechanical simulator of cardio-respiratory movements for Impedance Minute Ventilation assessment

Many cardiac pacing devices implement the Impedance Minute Ventilation (IMV) sensing to assess Minute Ventilation (MV), a well known physiological parameter used for rate-adapting pacing. IMV estimates the ventilation information by measuring the transtrathoracic impedance provided by standard electrodes used for cardiac pacing, without requiring any special lead. However, dedicated circuits and algorithms are needed to discriminate the ventilation information from other confounding components of the impedance signal mainly due to the cardiac activity. We developed a mechanical simulator of Cardio-Respiratory movements (C-R simulator) to be used for analyzing transthoracic impedance signals to provide an effective implementation of IMV sensors and algorithms in cardiac pacing devices.