Sleepiness Evaluation Using Portable Near-infrared Spectroscopy Device during Driving Car

Abstract

Many traffic accidents in car driving are associated with sleepiness. It is possible to prevent these traffic accidents by detecting sleepiness of the drivers while driving their car and making them pay attention to driving. Since the possibility that cerebral blood flow is related to sleepiness has been suggested, it is assumed that it would be able to evaluate sleepiness by the changes in cerebral blood flow. In this paper, we measured changes in cerebral blood flow during driving a car using a portable near-infrared spectroscopy device. The results show that oxygenated hemoglobin that is included in the cerebral blood flow tends to decrease with the rise of the sleepiness level evaluated by facial expression and that there is the significant difference in mean oxy-Hb between the two sleepiness level. From this vital reaction, it is suggested that the possibility of sleepiness evaluation of a driver using near-infrared spectroscopy and detection of driver's sleepiness at the level that driver's consciousness become low.