Spirometer

Overview

Spirometers are used for a variety of lung and respiratory function tests. They measure the amount of air a subject can breathe in and out of their lungs, and how hard and fast they can breathe out. In other words, they measure and test overall lung function or lung capacity.

Spirometers are essential for research that assesses respiration or that examines:

Restrictive or chronic obstructive lung disease
Airway resistance
Pulmonary function

ADInstruments' Spirometer is a precision differential pressure transducer, which is used together with a pneumotach flow head to measure the flow and volume of air that can be inhaled and exhaled. Therefore, it is useful for lung function indications and assessing breathing patterns associated with conditions such as asthma, bronchitis, pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The Spirometer provides an output signal proportional to airflow, which can be recorded by a C Series Front End Interface or traditional PowerLab data acquisition system and analysed using LabChart’s Spirometry Extension. The Spirometry Extension displays and calculates respiratory parameters such as:

Tidal volume
Minute ventilation
Respiratory rate
Peak inspiratory flow (PIF)
Peak expiratory flow (PEF)
Forced vital capacity (FVC)
Forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1)

By selecting a suitably sized respiratory flow head, our Spirometer can be used with small animals (mice and rats), large animals and humans. Additionally, it can also be used with the Heated Pneumotach 800L with Heater Controller, which has its own heated flow head to eliminate condensation, making this combination ideal for continuous human exercise studies.

The Spirometer is also supplied when purchasing the Exercise Physiology System or Exercise Physiology Kit.

For analysis, use the Spirometer with LabChart analysis software to seamlessly derive respiratory parameters based on flow and volume. These include VE, VT, PIF, PEF, FVC and FEV1. LabChart has a free software add-on for Spirometry, that lets you easily select flow units as either μL/s, mL/s or L/s.

Features

Precise differential pressure measurement that is used to determine respiration flow rates with a suitable flow head selection.
Provides a range of amplification required to correspond with a variety of flow rates, from fractions of a liter per minute (mice and rats) to a thousand liters per minute (adult humans during exercise).
Additional programmable software filtering to remove unwanted background noise or signal frequencies.
Software controlled zeroing for offset removal.
Easy detection and extraction of spirometry parameters from recorded data.

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