Computer sleep stage scoring--an expert system approach

This paper describes the application of the expert system concept to sleep stage scoring and is aimed at managing the large variability found in such records. The primary computational burden, sleep parameter calculation, can be relieved by recognizing major classes of recordings or 'somnotypes' having internally consistent sleep parameters for each class but significant differences between classes. The initiation and evolution of somnotypes so as to maintain accuracy while introducing a variety of sleep recordings is treated. The technique is demonstrated on seven all-night recordings resulting in 89.6% accuracy for about 5000 pages of data.