System and method for assessing sleep quality

• US 20060020178A1
• Filed: 09/19/2005
• Published: 01/26/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 08/07/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Apneos Corporation
• Original Assignee: Apneos Corporation
• Inventors: Sotos, John G., Branscum, John L. Jr.
• Application Number:
  US11/230,942
• Publication Number:
  US 20060020178A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/300
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/374 Detecting the frequency distribution of signals, e.g. detecting delta, theta, alpha, beta or gamma waves
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4815 Sleep quality

Abstract

A method for improved visualization of information related to the physiology of a sleeping patient is disclosed. Physiological information from the patient is obtained by a device, converted to digital format, and processed to yield epochs of time based on whether the patient was in a physiologically desirable or undesirable state. The duration of epochs is plotted as a series of rectangles and a quality-of-sleep score is calculated based on the epoch lengths.

Claims

1. A method for characterizing a state of a patient, comprising:

identifying a desired physiological state;

identifying an undesired physiological state;

obtaining physiological data from the patient;

identifying epochs of time wherein the physiological data are indicative of the subject having been in the desired physiological state without being in the undesirable physiological state;

rendering a graph wherein;

a first axis corresponds to length of time;

a second axis corresponds to fraction of the summed duration of all epochs;

each epoch is plotted as a rectangle according to the axes.