Sleep Period Time Estimation Based on Electrodermal Activity

We proposed and tested a method to estimate sleep period time (SPT) using electrodermal activity (EDA) signals. Eight healthy subjects and six obstructive sleep apnea patients participated in the experiments. Each subject's EDA signals were measured at the middle and ring fingers of the dominant hand during polysomnography (PSG). For nine of the 17 participants, wrist actigraphy was also measured for a quantitative comparison of EDA- and actigraphy-based methods. Based on the training data, we observed that sleep onset was accompanied by a gradual reduction of amplitude of the EDA signals, whereas sleep offset was accompanied by a rapid increase in amplitude of EDA signals. We developed a method based on these EDA fluctuations during sleep-wake transitions, and applied it to a test dataset. The performance of the method was assessed by comparing its results with those from a physician's sleep stage scores. The mean absolute errors in the obtained values for sleep onset, offset, and period time between the proposed method, and the results of the PSG were 4.1, 3.0, and 6.1 min, respectively. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in the corresponding values between the methods. We compared these results with those obtained by applying actigraphic methods, and found that our algorithm outperformed these in terms of each estimated parameter of interest in SPT estimation. Long awakening periods were also detected based on sympathetic responses reflected in the EDA signals. The proposed method can be applied to a daily sleep monitoring system.