Development of a bellow-based test lung for spontaneous breathing

Abstract

Spontaneous breathing in mechanical ventilation can lead to patient ventilator asynchrony. In the research concerning asynchrony, test lungs can help to reduce the number of animal experiments. However, the number of test lungs which can simulate spontaneous breathing are rare and expensive. This paper presents a test lung with two bellows and springs with an additional pressure source for spontaneous breathing. The test lung is capable of imitating a human subject and can be used for further development of mechanical ventilators and their automation.