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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

A Model to Simulate Clinically Relevant Hypoxia in Humans
Published on: December 22, 2016
Detection of apnoeic and breathing activity through pole-zero analysis of the SpO2 signal
Lisa Lazareck1, Lionel Tarassenko
1Dept. of Eng. Sci., Oxford Univ., UK. lisa.lazareck@eng.ox.ac.uk
Abstract:
A new method using autoregressive modelling and pole tracking is proposed to detect cyclical activity within the oxygen saturation signal, SpO2, for subjects with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). OSA is a sleep condition whereby the upper airway is obstructed and a cessation in respiration (apnoea) occurs. The three types of detected activity include: apnoea, mix, and normal breathing, where mix, refers to breathing with a low-frequency component. Overall classifications produced by the analysis are in close agreement with expert scoring of the database. Furthermore, the pole-zero analysis method allows, for the first time, the mix sections to be identified automatically.
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