SleepAtHome - Portable Home Based System for Pediatric Sleep Apnoea Diagnosis

Abstract

Remote monitoring has the potential to greatly impact many aspects of medical care. Diagnostic techniques for sleep breathing disorders (SBD) in children are an example for this concept. One of the most common type of SBD in children is obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA). The gold standard method to diagnose OSA is polysomnography, but it must be performed in a special equipped medical facility. Another simpler way uses a portable monitoring system called oximetry, developed to ease sleep monitorization at home in an environment familiar to the patient. However oximetry may generate false negative results and it will be necessary to use Polysomnography for a more accurate study. Sleep studies with digital cameras using image processing, have been used to identify SBD [6]. This paper describes a portable system able to analyse audio and image recordings in acoplation with oximetry data. Its aim is to help medical teams diagnosing SBD, by improving oximetry efficiency.