Development of a Portable Non-Invasive Swallowing and Respiration Assessment Device and Clinical Application

Swallowing is not only an important function for maintaining life, but also affecting the quality of life. Dysphagia is a symptom, which means that the food from the mouth are difficult to be transported to the stomach. It will make people malnourished, or even dead induced by choking. Assessment is the most important target to treat dysphagia. Some researchers have proposed that good coordination between breathing and swallowing is very vital for safety and health because the air we breathe and the bolus we swallow will pass through the common way i.e., pharynx. If the swallowing apnea duration and the respiratory phase of the swallowing are not well coordinated, the dysphagia will occur. Nowadays, the assessment methods in the hospital are very expensive, and the inspection has to be done in a specific laboratory. Also, all of these methods are invasive. Our research in this project, on the other hand, will develop a portable and non-invasive swallowing and respiration assessment system. We will use this system to detect the coordination between breathing and swallowing. Also, we will record the signals of the submandibular muscle surface EMG, the movement of the thyroid cartilage and the respiratory status of the nasal cavity to identify the special events during the whole swallowing process. In addition, our program will not only automatically analyze the whole process of each swallowing duration, but also calculate the latency, excursion and jitter time of the thyroid cartilage when it acts. Finally, we will use our approach to compare the differences between smokers and non-smokers to verify the significance of the good coordination between breathing and swallowing.

Project ID:PC10308-0986
External Project ID:MOST103-2221-E182-020-MY2