Using hidden Markov models to build an automatic, continuous and probabilistic sleep stager

We report about an automatic continuous sleep stager which is based on probabilistic principles employing hidden Markov models (HMMs). Our sleep stager offers the advantage of being objective by not relying on human scorers, having much finer temporal resolution (1 second instead of 30 second): and being based on solid probabilistic principles rather than a predefined set of rules. Results obtained for nine whole night sleep recordings are reported.