SBIR-STTR Award

It is proposed to develop time domain analysis tools for polysomnography data and to use the color dimension to improve the accuracy of the polysomnography data displayed on a computer monitor in thirty second (or longer) epochs. The time domain tools will lead to improved methods for objectively quantifying the information contained in polysomnography data which will supplement the information obtained from sleep staging. The project's feasibility will be demonstrated in Phase I by developing tools for quantifying the slow-wave activity present in the data. The tools will include a graphical interface to facilitate the user inputs and provide multiple means for obtaining the processed data. A database management system will also be developed for managing the sleep-wave data. Computer monitors, because of their limited resolution, are unable to display polysomnography data in thirty second epochs. Unless means are taken to prevent frequency aliasing, the data displayed may be severely distorted. This work will develop frequency discrimination techniques which can utilize the additional dimension of color to more accurately display digital polsomnography data

Polysomnography, the advent in the 1950s of an objective means of recording and analyzing sleep, greatly accelerated progress in the scientific description of sleep, including the establishment of age-sex norms. In the 1980s, polysomnography enabled the discovery and description of obstructive sleep apnea, a relatively common condition having co-morbidities such as hypertension, stroke, diabetes, epilepsy, and possibly some variants of Alzheimer's Disease, as well as detrimental effects on waking cognitive function and mood. During the past two decades, the marriage of relatively inexpensive desktop computers to polysomnography has spawned the field of digital polysomnography, replacing the large, cumbersome, data acquisition and display-limited analog polysomnographs by desktop digital systems enabling data acquisition, display, autoscoring, report generation, and archival of polysomnographic data. While providing advantages in terms of the ease and flexibility of data display, monitoring, and reporting of polysomnography data, digital polysomnography provides a decreased accuracy of the data representation/analysis and its display on the industry-standard 30 second computer monitor. The proposed work offers the possibility of a third paradigmatic advance in the objective description of polysomnographic data-development of an originally-conceived, fully customizable, time domain-based software system that provides accurate representation and analysis of the micro-architecture of polysomnography data. The system also provides a fully customizable technique for enhancing the ocular discrimination of waveforms on the industry-standard 30 second computer monitor screen, and customizable modules for reporting and archiving of the microarchitecture of sleep waveforms. Phase I successfully accomplished development of the system's time domain-based waveform analysis tools for delta wave activity, as well as for the display, report generation, and archival of delta waveforms. Phase II work will extend the Phase I work to all of the waveforms of human adult sleep. The work will continue the development of the display enhancement tool for enhancing the ocular discrimination of sleep waveforms on a computer monitor, of additional GUIs to facilitate user inputs and provide multiple means for obtaining the processed data, and of the database management system and report generation modules. The work will be validated by bench testing and a sleep lab study. An enormous commercial potential is anticipated