SleepAp: an automated obstructive sleep apnoea screening application for smartphones

IEEE J Biomed Health Inform. 2015 Jan;19(1):325-31. doi: 10.1109/JBHI.2014.2307913.

Abstract

Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a sleep disorder with long-term consequences. Long-term effects include sleep-related issues and cardiovascular diseases. OSA is often diagnosed with an overnight sleep test called a polysomnogram. Monitoring can be costly with long wait times for diagnosis. In this paper, a novel OSA screening framework and prototype phone application are introduced. A database of 856 patients that underwent at-home polygraphy was collected. Features were derived from audio, actigraphy, photoplethysmography (PPG), and demographics, and used as the inputs of a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The SVM was trained on 735 patients and tested on 121 patients. Classification on the test set had an accuracy of up to 92.2% when classifying subjects as having moderate or severe OSA versus being healthy or a snorer based on the clinicians' diagnoses. The signal processing and machine learning algorithms were ported to Java and integrated into the phone application-SleepAp. SleepAp records the body position, audio, actigraphy and PPG signals, and implements the clinically validated STOP-BANG questionnaire. It derives features from the signals and classifies the user as having OSA or not using the SVM trained on the clinical database. The resulting software could provide a new, easy-to-use, low-cost, and widely available modality for OSA screening.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Cell Phone*
  • Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / instrumentation
  • Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Humans
  • Mass Screening / instrumentation
  • Mass Screening / methods
  • Mobile Applications*
  • Polysomnography / instrumentation*
  • Polysomnography / methods
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Sleep Apnea, Obstructive / diagnosis*