Non-contact, real-time monitoring of patient thoracic cross-sectional area during CPR based on depth camera

Real-time monitoring of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) quality is crucial for the resuscitation of patients with cardiac arrest (CA). However, most of the parameters measured by existing monitoring devices are fixed absolute metrics, overlooking significant individual variation feedback metrics such as thoracic cross-sectional area. To address this, we propose a non-contact CPR quality monitoring method based on a depth camera, which measures compression depth, rate, and changes in the patient’s thoracic cross-sectional area in real time. The method first uses the depth camera to create a spatial point cloud and track the compression position, then calculates the monitoring parameters based on depth changes in the point cloud within the region of interest. Experiments conducted in different scenarios demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, experiments on CPR manikins of different body sizes reveal that the same level of compression results in different compression effects depending on the body size, suggesting that personalized compression strategies may improve the success rate of resuscitation in real-world scenarios. This study is the first to achieve real-time monitoring of thoracic cross-sectional area during CPR, incorporating a new indicator into CPR quality monitoring.