Non-contact screening system with two microwave radars in the diagnosis of sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome.

There are two key problems in applying Doppler radar to a diagnosis system for sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome. The first is noise associated with body movement and the second is the body position in bed and the change of the sleeping posture. We propose a new automatic gain control and a real-time radar-output channel selection method which is based on a spectrum shape analysis. There are three types of sleep apnea: central sleep apnea, obstructive sleep apnea and mixed sleep apnea. In this paper we paid attention to the obstructive sleep apnea and attempted to detect the disorder of corrugated shape compared with usual breathing or the paradoxical movement of the reversed phase with chest and abdominal radar signals. A prototype of the system was set up at a sleep disorder center in a hospital and field tests were carried out with eight subjects. Despite the subjects engaging in frequent body movements while sleeping, the system was quite effective in the diagnosis of sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (r=0.98).