Verification of Non-contact Pulse Rate Monitoring for Detecting Respiratory Arrest during Sleeping

Abstract

Sleep Apnea Syndrome (SAS) causes various diseases such as circulatory diseases and cerebrovascular diseases. However, the number of patients who are diagnosed in medical institution is about 15% of the estimated number of potential SAS patients. SAS patients have little subjective symptoms. There are several studies to detect respiratory arrest using HRV or pulse rate variability (PRV). However, these methods are not suitable for daily life because it is necessary to attach some sensors to subjects. Therefore, this study was performed to develop a non-contact monitoring system, which was applicable to daily life, for screening potential sleep apnea syndrome patients. In order to meet the system requirements, pulse rate variability, which was calculated from infrared imaging, was used for detecting respiratory arrest events. Ten subjects were recruited to participate in the experiment. As the results, respiratory arrest events were detected with a maximum sensitivity of 0.65.