ECG Biomarkers for Simultaneous Detection of Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Cheyne-Stokes Breathing

Use of extended electrocardiography (ECG) for detection of sleep disordered breathing SDB when obstructive sleep apneas and Cheyne-Stokes breathing are simultaneously present is explored. A multi-tier algorithm is designed that uses quantitative changes in the morphology of the QRS complex of Lead 1 and V4 due of SDB events and combines those changes with variations in heart rate to detect each type of SDB. For this purpose, ECG signals are divided into 15 minute epochs. These epochs are then subjected to baseline wander removal and R peak detection. An envelope of R peaks is computed to derive R wave attenuation (RWA). Concurrently, the heart rate variability (HRV) is also computed. Various biomarkers derived from these trends are combined to develop an algorithm to classify Normal, OSA and CSR epochs. One hundred and five (105) data clips from 15 subjects were used to test the proposed algorithm. It produced detection rates of 93.75%, 100% and 83.3% for Normal, OSA and CSR epochs respectively in case of training set (66 clips). Detection rates of 75%, 85.71% and 70.5% for Normal, OSA and CSR epochs respectively were obtained in case of test set (39 clips).