Identification of onset, maximum and termination of obstructive sleep apnoea events in single lead ECG recordings

Measuring the Apnoea Hypopnoea Index (AHI) is important for determining the severity of any apnoea patient. This study presents a method of screening each apnoea event separately based on the single lead Electrocardiogram (EGG) signal. The whole ECG of a subject was divided into Normal, Onset, OSA-maximum and Termination epochs with length of 5 seconds. PSD analysis was used for determining the features directly from the ECG. ROC area was calculated to determine the discrimination capability of each feature (or power in each frequency bin) found by PSD analysis. The maximum ROC area found between Normal vs. OSA-maximum was 0.81 in the frequency range of 52–72 Hz. The ROC area and significant frequency band for Normal vs. Onset and Normal vs. Termination were 0.78, 0.78 and 57–65 Hz, 52–66 Hz respectively.

[1]  G. Gibson,et al.  Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: underestimated and undertreated. , 2004, British medical bulletin.

[2]  W. J. Tompkins,et al.  Estimation of QRS Complex Power Spectra for Design of a QRS Filter , 1984, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[3]  T. Young,et al.  The occurrence of sleep-disordered breathing among middle-aged adults. , 1993, The New England journal of medicine.

[4]  R. Cartwright,et al.  Obstructive sleep apnea: A sleep disorder with major effects on health. , 2001, Disease-a-month : DM.

[5]  Daniel J Buysse,et al.  Sleep–Related Breathing Disorders in Adults: Recommendations for Syndrome Definition and Measurement Techniques in Clinical Research , 2000 .

[6]  K. Clark,et al.  Association of Sleep-Disordered Breathing, Sleep Apnea, and Hypertension in a Large Community- Based Study , 2000 .

[7]  P. Welch.  The use of fast Fourier transform for the estimation of power spectra: A method based on time averaging over short, modified periodograms , 1967 .

[8]  J. Hanley,et al.  The meaning and use of the area under a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. , 1982, Radiology.

[10]  N J Douglas,et al.  The sleep hypopnea syndrome. , 1988, The American review of respiratory disease.

[11]  Bonnie K. Lind,et al.  Association of Sleep-Disordered Breathing, Sleep Apnea, and Hypertension in a Large Community-Based Study , 2000 .

[12]  Conor Heneghan,et al.  Automated processing of the single-lead electrocardiogram for the detection of obstructive sleep apnoea , 2003, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[13]  Daniel J Buysse,et al.  Sleep-related breathing disorders in adults: recommendations for syndrome definition and measurement techniques in clinical research. The Report of an American Academy of Sleep Medicine Task Force. , 1999, Sleep.