Abstract
Sleep fragmentation is a cause of impaired daytime performance. We have developed an algorithm for detection of nighttime awakenings based on heart rate. As much as 15 healthy normal sleepers, 23 ± 3 years, participated in this study. The dataset contains 33 nights of polysomnographic (PSG) and electrocardiographic (ECG) measurements. After a habituation night, the subjects underwent a reference night without interventions, followed by some nights with interventions. These included noise, light, physical and cognitive interventions. Nighttime awakenings were subdivided in to awakenings (>15 s) and short awakenings (<15 s). The overall number of awakenings was 18.5 (±10.5) and short awakenings 13.2 (±10.5). The number of nighttime awakenings did not differ significantly between the reference and intervention nights; a repeated measures ANOVA resulted in a p value of 0.66 for awakenings and 0.57 for short awakenings. As much as 5 reference nights were used as training set, 28 as validation set. The algorithm detects the awakening periods with a sensitivity of 80.5% (confidence interval 77.9–82.9%). Heart rate is an adequate measure that allows for detection of nighttime awakenings and hence sleep quality.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Flemish agency for Innovation through Science and Technology (IWT) for the financial support. This study was approved by the Medical Ethical Committee of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
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Communicated by Susan Ward.
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Bulckaert, A., Exadaktylos, V., De Bruyne, G. et al. Heart rate-based nighttime awakening detection. Eur J Appl Physiol 109, 317–322 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-010-1359-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-010-1359-0