Multiparameter Physiological Analysis in Obstructive Sleep Apnea Simulated With Mueller Maneuver

Sleep apnea is a common condition that poses serious health risks. Current state-of-the-art technology for diagnosing and assessing sleep apnea is obtrusive, expensive, and lacks integration/analysis of important cardiovascular and respiratory parameters. This paper evaluates a novel unobtrusive multiparameter sleep apnea monitor, namely, the Biopeak chest belt monitor, and describes a collection of associated algorithms for the detection of sleep apnea and assessment of the extent of the resulting physiological disturbance. The system uses dry electrodes to acquire electrocardiogram, respiratory, and stroke volume data and analyzes multiple physiological parameters from it. In a pilot investigation on eight healthy subjects simulating a total of 66 obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) events with Mueller maneuvers, the proposed system achieves an accuracy of 95.6%, a specificity of 97.2%, and a sensitivity of 93.8% for identifying these events. Moreover, the response of the simulated OSA events on the multiple physiological parameters conforms to earlier published work. We thus conclude that the proposed chest belt system has potential to be used for reliable sleep apnea detection and comprehensive evaluation of cardiovascular and respiratory parameters in sleep apnea.