The Sleep of the Ring: Comparison of the ŌURA Sleep Tracker Against Polysomnography

Objective/Background: To evaluate the performance of a multisensor sleep-tracker (ŌURA ring) against polysomnography (PSG) in measuring sleep and sleep stages. Participants: Forty-one healthy adolescents and young adults (13 females; Age: 17.2 ± 2.4 years). Methods: Sleep data were recorded using the ŌURA ring and standard PSG on a single laboratory overnight. Metrics were compared using Bland-Altman plots and epoch-by-epoch (EBE) analysis. Results: Summary variables for sleep onset latency (SOL), total sleep time (TST), and wake after sleep onset (WASO) were not different between ŌURA ring and PSG. PSG-ŌURA discrepancies for WASO were greater in participants with more PSG-defined WASO (p < .001). Compared with PSG, ŌURA ring underestimated PSG N3 (~20 min) and overestimated PSG REM (~17 min; p < .05). PSG-ŌURA differences for TST and WASO lay within the ≤ 30 min a-priori-set clinically satisfactory ranges for 87.8% and 85.4% of the sample, respectively. From EBE analysis, ŌURA ring had a 96% sensitivity to detect sleep, and agreement of 65%, 51%, and 61%, in detecting "light sleep" (N1), "deep sleep" (N2 + N3), and REM sleep, respectively. Specificity in detecting wake was 48%. Similarly to PSG-N3 (p < .001), "deep sleep" detected with the ŌURA ring was negatively correlated with advancing age (p = .001). ŌURA ring correctly categorized 90.9%, 81.3%, and 92.9% into PSG-defined TST ranges of < 6 hr, 6-7 hr, > 7 hr, respectively. Conclusions: Multisensor sleep trackers, such as the ŌURA ring have the potential for detecting outcomes beyond binary sleep-wake using sources of information in addition to motion. While these first results could be viewed as promising, future development and validation are needed.