Monitoring of cigarette smoking using wearable sensors and support vector machines

IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2013 Jul;60(7):1867-72. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2013.2243729. Epub 2013 Jan 30.

Abstract

Cigarette smoking is a serious risk factor for cancer, cardiovascular, and pulmonary diseases. Current methods of monitoring of cigarette smoking habits rely on various forms of self-report that are prone to errors and under reporting. This paper presents a first step in the development of a methodology for accurate and objective assessment of smoking using noninvasive wearable sensors (Personal Automatic Cigarette Tracker-PACT) by demonstrating feasibility of automatic recognition of smoke inhalations from signals arising from continuous monitoring of breathing and hand-to-mouth gestures by support vector machine classifiers. The performance of subject-dependent (individually calibrated) models was compared to performance of subject-independent (group) classification models. The models were trained and validated on a dataset collected from 20 subjects performing 12 different activities representative of everyday living (total duration 19.5 h or 21,411 breath cycles). Precision and recall were used as the accuracy metrics. Group models obtained 87% and 80% of average precision and recall, respectively. Individual models resulted in 90% of average precision and recall, indicating a significant presence of individual traits in signal patterns. These results suggest the feasibility of monitoring cigarette smoking by means of a wearable and noninvasive sensor system in free living conditions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Actigraphy / instrumentation*
  • Actigraphy / methods
  • Algorithms*
  • Clothing
  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Information Storage and Retrieval
  • Male
  • Monitoring, Ambulatory / instrumentation*
  • Plethysmography, Impedance / instrumentation*
  • Plethysmography, Impedance / methods
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Smoking*
  • Support Vector Machine*
  • Transducers
  • Young Adult