Sleep evaluation by a newly developed PVDF sensor non-contact sheet: A comparison with standard polysomnography and wrist actigraphy

Polysomnographic (PSG) recording of multiple physiological measures remains the gold standard for sleep assessment in both basic and clinical human sleep research. However, PSG requires many unnatural conditions that can influence sleep phenomena. Recently, non-contact sheet sensors (SS) have been developed for sleep evaluation. Sheet sensor technology provides advantages over existing minimally intrusive devices used to analyze sleep-related behavior, such as wrist actigraphy (WA), beginning with freedom from attachment to any probes or devices. Current SS measures additionally include two physiological measures - heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR). To test the validity of SS analyses, we performed simultaneous recordings of SS and standard PSG in thirteen healthy adult sleepers, with WA additionally available for nine of the subjects. Sleep period features were compared among the three methods, and HR and RR data from SS and PSG were compared. Comparisons between the automatic scoring of SS and WA and visual PSG scoring showed good sleep-wake discrimination (88.3% and 89.4% respectively). Sleep onset estimation relative to PSG was also good for both SS and WA (0.38 and -2.44 epoch differences, respectively). In addition, HR and RR measured by SS were also compared with PSG. Both HR and RR closely approximated PSG physiological measures (error rates: HR 2.4%, RR 4.3%). In summary, SS is expected to be less disruptive and easier to use for long-term home sleep monitoring.