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The inspired sinewave technique is a noninvasive method to measure airway dead space, functional residual capacity, pulmonary blood flow, and lung inhomogeneity simultaneously. The purpose of this paper was to assess the repeatability and accuracy of the current device prototype in measuring functional residual capacity, and also participant comfort when using such a device. To assess within-session repeatability, six sinewave measurements were taken over two-hour period in 17 healthy volunteers. To assess day-to-day repeatability, measurements were taken over 16 days in 3 volunteers. To assess accuracy, sinewave measurements were compared to body plethysmography in 44 healthy volunteers. Finally, 18 volunteers who experienced the inspired sinewave device, body plethysmography and spirometry were asked to rate the comfort of each technique on a scale of 1–10. The repeatability coefficients for dead space, functional residual capacity, and blood flow were 48.7 ml, 0.48L, and 2.4L/min respectively. Bland-Altman analyses showed a mean BIAS(SD) of −0.68(0.42)L for functional residual capacity when compared with body plethysmography. 14 out of 18 volunteers rated the inspired sinewave device as their preferred technique. The repeatability and accuracy of functional residual capacity measurements were found to be as good as other techniques in the literature. The high level of comfort and the non-requirement of patient effort meant that, if further refined, the inspired sinewave technique could be an attractive solution for difficult patient groups such as very young children, elderly, and ventilated patients., The inspired sinewave device is a novel noninvasive device to measure airway dead space, functional residual capacity, pulmonary blood flow, and lung inhomogeneity simultaneously, using gas transfer. In this study, the repeatability and accuracy of functional residual capacity measurements were found to be as good as other techniques in the literature. The high level of comfort and the non-requirement of patient effort meant that, if further refined, the device could be an attractive solution for difficult patient groups such as very young children, elderly, and ventilated patients.

Routine estimation of functional residual capacity (FRC) in ventilated patients has been a long held goal, with many methods previously proposed, but none have been used in routine clinical practice. This paper proposes three models for determining FRC using the nitrous oxide concentration from the entire expired breath in order to improve the precision of the estimate. Of the three models proposed, a dead space with two mixing compartments provided the best results, reducing the mean limits of agreement with the FRC measured by whole body plethysmography by up to 41%. This moves away from traditional lung models, which do not account for mixing within the dead space. Compared to literature values for FRC, the results are similar to those obtained using helium dilution and better than the LUFU device (Dräger Medical, Lubeck, Germany), with significantly better limits of agreement compared to plethysmography.