Computer Science Provides a More Sound Way to Test for Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a serious disorder that causes a person to momentarily stop breathing while they sleep. These pauses in breathing can occur many times an hour, and can cause low oxygen levels in the blood and chronic sleepiness, which in turn can lead to deadly accidents. Sleep apnea has also been associated with a range of serious health problems including depression, heart disease and stroke.

Approximately 24 percent of men and 9 percent of women experience sleep apnea, but getting a diagnosis involves a procedure called polysomnography, also known as a sleep study. "It's not as simple as paying a visit to the doctor in the morning for an hour and walking away with a prescription," said Ioannis Pavlidis, Eckhard-Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Houston, and co-investigator of the study. "You have to undergo overnight monitoring in a sleep lab. The subject is wired and sleeps there. Sometimes, the subject has to spend more than one night."

Now, a computer scientist from the University of Houston and a doctor of sleep medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have teamed up to create a new, less invasive method of diagnosing sleep apnea. The new diagnostic procedure developed by Pavlidis, Murthy and their collaborators uses a thermal infrared camera to monitor breathing waveforms and airflow as a patient breathes in and out of his or her nose. The measurements are processed using computational algorithms and produce results that have proved to be as accurate as traditional polysomnography. The new method also provides doctors with more information about the patient's breathing.

Visit Website >

Image credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation