An apparatus and method to characterize causes of positional plagiocephaly

Positional plagiocephaly (misshapen head in infants) has increased dramatically in the United States since the beginning of the Back to Sleep program in 1992. In order to understand the increase due to repositioning from prone to supine position for sleep, we developed a home-based monitoring system to discern state of sleep and re-positioning frequency in infants. The portable system allows real-time logging of sleep position and patterns by a simplified sleep algorithm and association of sleep head position and movement which are time-stamped for correlation. Preliminary correlatory results suggest that plagiocephalic infants experience greater periods of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep than controls and show more narrow range of motion during sleep.