Breath-Based Monitoring of Pilot Hypoxia
Abstract
High performance fighter aircraft subsystems are routinely monitored to a very high degree, with over 1700 data streams recorded on the F22A Raptor, enabling a high degree of "forensic" analysis of any inflight "incident". Yet curiously the degree of monitoring of the pilot of the aircraft is minimal at best, despite the fact that the pilot is a critical element in any flight. A well-recognized risk in flight is hypoxia, and recent issues with the F22A fleet involving "hypoxia-like incidents" have had operational impact. Despite an extensive investigation a definitive cause of these incidents is not fully understood, in part due to a lack of information on the status of the pilot. While monitoring of arterial O2 saturation via oximetry is available, this is a poor indicator of initial hypoxia as the PO2 in the blood can fall substantially with little change in the O2 saturation, and because there is significant time lag between the onset of hypoxia and fall in Sao2 at the monitoring site (fingertip or forehead). Early on-set detection of hypoxia is essential. This proposal is a proof-of-concept study to demonstrate pilot-side physiological monitoring as an important complement to the engineering data already available on the aircraft. Taken together, the physiological and engineering data streams would allow an accurate and relevant forensic analysis of any future hypoxia-like incident, covering both critical systems; pilot and aircraft.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 23, 2016
- Source ID
- FA95501510116
Entities
People
- G Prisk
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of California, San Diego