Validation of Somno-Art Software, a novel approach of sleep staging, compared with polysomnography in disturbed sleep...

Integrated analysis of heart rate (electrocardiogram [ECG]) and body movements (actimetry) during sleep in healthy subjects have previously been shown to generate similar evaluation of sleep architecture and continuity with Somno-Art Software compared to polysomnography (PSG), the gold standard. However, the performance of this new approach of sleep staging has not yet been evaluated on patients with disturbed sleep.

Sleep staging from 458 sleep recordings from multiple studies comprising healthy and patient population (obstructive sleep apnea [OSA], insomnia, major depressive disorder [MDD]) was obtained from PSG visual scoring using the American Academy of Sleep Medicine rules and from Somno-Art Software analysis on synchronized ECG and actimetry.

Inter-rater reliability (IRR), evaluated with 95% absolute agreement intra-class correlation coefficient, was rated as "excellent" (ICC_AAAvg95% ≥ 0.75) or "good" (ICC_AAAvg95% ≥ 0.60) for all sleep parameters assessed, except non-REM (NREM) and N3 sleep in healthy participants (ICC_AAAvg95% = 0.43, ICC_AAAvg95% = 0.56) and N3 sleep in OSA patients (ICC_AAAvg95% = 0.59) rated as "fair" IRR. Overall sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and Cohen's kappa coefficient of agreement (κ) on the entire sample were respectively of 93.3%, 69.5%, 87.8%, and 0.65 for wake/sleep classification and accuracy and κ were of 68.5% and 0.55 for W/N1+N2/N3/rapid eye movement (REM) classification. These performances were similar in healthy and patient population.

The present results suggest that Somno-Art can be a valid sleep-staging tool in both healthy subjects and patients with OSA, insomnia, or MDD. It could complement existing non-attended techniques measuring sleep-related breathing patterns or be a useful alternative to laboratory-based PSG when this latter is not available.