Apnea Event Estimation During Sleep Using Polyvinylidene Fluoride Film

This paper suggests an unconstrained method for sleep apnea event detection during sleep based on physiological signal from polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) sensor. Sleep apnea syndrome (SAS) is a common sleep-related breathing disorder and it is closely related with cardiovascular diseases. Polysomnography (PSG) is the gold standard for SAS diagnosis but it has many drawbacks. Six SAS patients participated in our study and patient’s respiratory signals during sleep were collected by a PVDF sensor which was installed on a bed. Sleep apnea events were detected using amplitude of measured respiration signals and the Apnea Hypopnea Index (AHI) results were compared with those from PSG. The Pearson correlation coefficient between paired results was 0.982 (p<0.001) and apnea severity of each patient was accurately assessed. Keywords-Sleep Apnea; PVDF film; Polysomonography