Unobtrusive cot side sleep stage classification in preterm infants using ultra-wideband radar

Background Sleep is an important driver of development in infants born preterm. However, continuous unobtrusive sleep monitoring of infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is challenging. Objective To assess the feasibility of ultra-wideband (UWB) radar for sleep stage classification in preterm infants admitted to the NICU. Methods Active and quiet sleep were visually assessed using video recordings in 10 preterm infants (recorded between 29 and 34 weeks of postmenstrual age) admitted to the NICU. UWB radar recorded all infant's motions during the video recordings. From the baseband data measured with the UWB radar, a total of 48 features were calculated. All features were related to body and breathing movements. Six machine learning classifiers were compared regarding their ability to reliably classify active and quiet sleep using these raw signals. Results The adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) classifier achieved the highest balanced accuracy (81%) over a 10-fold cross-validation, with an area under the curve of receiver operating characteristics (AUC-ROC) of 0.82. Conclusions The UWB radar data, using the AdaBoost classifier, is a promising method for non-obtrusive sleep stage assessment in very preterm infants admitted to the NICU.