Monitoring circadian rhythms of night-shift operators with Hidden Markov Models: Poster paper: CSCI-RTHI

Chronotherapy refers to the delivery of therapeutic treatments following a person's physiological cycles, also known as circadian rhythms. These cycles may be thought as an individual's “biological clocks”, having an approximate periodicity of twenty-four hours. Recent research has found that coordinating with and adapting to circadian rhythms can maximize treatment effectiveness, minimize treatment side effects, or both. However, disturbance of circadian rhythms is not limited to sick patients. For example, sleep perturbation may induce a disruption of circadian rhythms, similar to acute or chronic stress. In the present article, we discuss the interest of gathering information concerning circadian rhythms of night-shift workers and applying Hidden Markov Models to such data in order to extract important information about these rhythms.