Detection of Sleep Apnea Using Sonar Smartphone Technology

This paper assesses the performance of a new noncontact sensing system based on Sonar technology as a Sleep Disordered Breathing (SDB) screener. The respiration and movements of a subject in bed can be measured via a smartphone placed onto a bedside table equipped with a custom app. The app employs novel proprietary algorithms to identify sleep stages and detect SDB patterns.The SDB screener was trained on a set of 94 overnights recorded at a sleep laboratory, where volunteers underwent simultaneous monitoring via a full polysomnography (PSG) system and a smartphone equipped with the app. An additional fully independent set of 68 recordings, uniformly distributed across SDB severity classes, were held out for independent testing. The performance on the test set is excellent and comparable to other existing ambulatory SDB screeners, with a sensitivity of 94% and specificity of 97%, for a clinical threshold for the Apnea Hypopnea Index (AHI) of 15 events/hour.The technology can easily be adopted to scale, as no purchase of dedicated sensors is needed, providing a much needed low- cost alternative for monitoring and potentially screening of large population segments. Furthermore, the non-invasive, contactless sensing does not interfere with the sleeping habits of the user, facilitating longitudinal assessment. This, in combination with the simultaneous measurement of the user's sleep quality, could provide invaluable insights in the subject's response to SDB therapy and lead to increased patient adherence.