Classifier Precision Analysis for Sleep Apnea Detection Using ECG Signals

This article presents a study on the efficiency of implementing classifiers for the detection of sleep apnea moments based on a minute-to-minute Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal, detailing the comparison of the accuracy for different classifiers. At each ECG signal, a Sgolay filter was applied to extract the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and the ECG-Derived Respiration (EDR) and they were used for the training, testing and validation of the classifiers. The same features were extended in a second phase in order to understand if all the classified features were important. According to the results obtained, the best accuracy was 82.12%, with a sensitivity and a specificity of 88.41% and 72.29%, respectively. This study shows the importance of choosing the right classifier for a specific problem as well as choosing and using the best features for a better accuracy. These promising early-stage results may lead to complementary studies to improve the classifiers for a possible real-world application. The performance of the proposed model was compared with other approaches used for the detection of sleep apnea.