Time characteristics of prolonged partial obstruction periods using an Emfit mattress

Abstract

Prolonged partial obstruction (PPO) is a sleep disordered breathing (SDB) characterized by increased respiratory efforts for extended periods of time. In this research, we analyzed the time characteristics differences of the Emfit (Electromechanical film transducer) signal between PPO and normal breathing (NB) periods. An experienced neurophysiologist selected ten-minute periods of PPO and NB from a sample of 10 patients suffering from PPO using the esophageal pressure as a Gold reference. Time features were extracted to study the differences between the two types of breathing. Statistical differences of a set of time-related features were assessed with Mann-Whitney U–test. The individual diagnostic performance was determined using receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis. Additionally, the diagnostic performance of a subset of features was evaluated using a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. In the evaluation, average results over ten-fold Monte Carlo cross-validation with 80% training and 20% testing splits were reported. Sixteen features reached statistical significance. The classifier achieved sensitivity and specificity of 85±12%, 87±14%, respectively.