Robust association of pathological respiratory events in sahs patients: A step towards mining polysomnograms

Abstract

This paper presents a method for performing a robust association between the apneas and hypopneas recorded on a polysomnogram and the desaturations they cause. It is based on a structural algorithm that takes advantage of the fuzzy set theory to represent the medical knowledge on which it relies. The method aims to generate information that could serve as a starting point for gaining a deeper insight into the Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome by means of data mining techniques. This has led to a sacrifice of sensitivity for specificity. We have validated our proposal over 37 hours of polysomnographic recordings. 88% of the hypoventilations present in the recordings were associated with the desaturations they caused, presenting a rate of false associations of 0.86%. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.