Monitoring patients using vision cameras can cause privacy intrusion problems. In this paper, we propose a patient position monitoring system based on a patient cloth with unobtrusive sensors. We use flexible sensors based on polyvinylidene fluoride, which is a flexible piezoelectric material. Theflexiblesensorsareinsertedintopartsclosetothekneeandhipoftheloosepatientcloth. We measure electrical signals from the sensors caused by the piezoelectric effect when the knee and hip in the cloth are bent. The measured sensor outputs are transferred to a computer via Bluetooth. We use a custom-made program to detect the position of the patient through a rule-based algorithm and the sensor outputs. The detectable postures are based on six human motions in and around a bed. The proposed system can detect the patient positions with a success rate over 88 percent for three patients.
Keywords: patient cloth; piezoelectric material; real-time monitoring; flexible sensor.