Detecting Breathing and Snoring Episodes Using a Wireless Tracheal Sensor—A Feasibility Study

Objective: Sleep-disordered breathing is both a clinical and a social problem. This implies the need for convenient solutions to simplify screening and diagnosis. The aim of the study was to investigate the sensitivity and specificity of a novel wireless system in detecting breathing and snoring episodes during sleep. Methods: A wireless acoustic sensor was elaborated and implemented. Segmentation (based on spectral thresholding and heuristics) and classification of all breathing episodes during recording were implemented through a mobile application. The system was evaluated on 1520 manually labeled episodes registered from 40 real-world, whole-night recordings of 16 generally healthy subjects. Results: The differentiation between normal breathing and snoring had 88.8% accuracy. As the system is intended for screening, high specificity of 95% is reported. Conclusion: The system is a compromise between nonmedical phone applications and medical sleep studies. The presented approach enables the study to be repetitive, personal, and inexpensive. It has additional value in the form of well-recorded data which are reliable and comparable. Significance: The system opens unexplored possibilities in sleep monitoring and study enabling a multinight recording strategy involving the collection and analysis of abundant data from thousands of people.