The Development of a Dual-Radar System with Automatic Hypopnea Threshold Optimization for Contact-Free Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome Screening

Full-night polysomnography (PSG) examination is regarded as the gold standard for the diagnosis of sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (SAHS). However, PSG requires the placement of multiple sensors on the head, face, and chest, which can impose a heavy strain on patients. Therefore, in the present study, we aimed to develop a contact-free, stand-alone SAHS screening system that eliminates body movement artifacts based on automatic optimization of the hypopnea threshold. Doppler radar sensors were placed beneath a mattress. In order to achieve high sensitivity and specificity, the hypopnea was based on the average amplitude of respiration during the full sleep period. The threshold was determined via receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis using PSG as a reference. We conducted full-night clinical tests of the proposed system in 27 patients with suspected SAHS (49 ± 12 years) at Tomei Atsugi Hospital. When predicting the severity of SAHS with an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) of >30/h using PSG as a reference, the proposed system achieved a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 100%. These results represent a drastic improvement over those of our previous study (sensitivity: 90%; specificity: 79%).