Obstructive sleep apnea screening by heart rate variability-based apnea/normal respiration discriminant model

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common sleep disorder; however, most patients are undiagnosed and untreated because it is difficult for patients themselves to notice OSA in daily living. Polysomnography (PSG), which is the gold standard test for sleep disorder diagnosis, cannot be performed in many hospitals. This fact motivates us to develop a simple system for screening OSA at home.

The autonomic nervous system changes during apnea, and such changes affect heart rate variability (HRV). This work develops a new apnea screening method based on HRV analysis and machine learning technologies. An apnea/normal respiration (A/N) discriminant model is built for respiration condition estimation for every heart rate measurement, and an apnea/sleep ratio is introduced for final diagnosis. A random forest is adopted for the A/N discriminant model construction, which is trained with the PhysioNet apnea-ECG database.

The screening performance of the proposed method was evaluated by applying it to clinical PSG data. Sensitivity and specificity achieved 76% and 92%, respectively, which are comparable to existing portable sleep monitoring devices used in sleep laboratories.

Since the proposed OSA screening method can be used more easily than existing devices, it will contribute to OSA treatment.