A system for comprehensive ECG waveform and trend analysis accompanying polysomnographic sleep apnea detection

Performance of analysis algorithms for sleep apnea detection revealed that results were best when heart rate variability morphologic ECG parameters were also considered. We have therefore set up a system for simultaneous recording of 12 lead ECGs during polysomnographic data acquisition. The PC based system HES LKG has been used and its analysis and data presentation programs have been extended to handle the large data amount of 400-600 MBytes per night recording. The system has been installed at the sleep laboratory of Marburg University. Up to now 50 night recordings from 40 patients have been acquired. The ECG data are processed in 10 s data segments. Raw data and results can be stored in the standard SCP format.