Remote sleep quality detecting system and method thereof

• US 8,353,828 B2
• Filed: 10/05/2009
• Issued: 01/15/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 11/21/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yuan Ze University
• Original Assignee: Yuan Ze University
• Inventors: Hsu, Yeh-Liang, Cheng, Chih-Ming
• Primary Examiner(s): Gedeon, Brian T
• Application Number:
  US12/573,226
• Publication Number:
  US 20100131028A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,198 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 600/301
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0004 characterised by the type of physiological signal transmitted
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/11 Measuring movement of the entire body or parts thereof, e.g. head or hand tremor, mobility of a limb for measuring pulse A61B5/02 ;A61B5/1038 takes precedence; motion detection to correct for motion artifacts in physiological signals A61B5/721
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1118 Determining activity level
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4815 Sleep quality
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7203 for noise prevention, reduction or removal
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7225 Details of analog processing, e.g. isolation amplifier, gain or sensitivity adjustment, filtering, baseline or drift compensation A61B5/30, A61B5/316 take precedence; transformers for specific applications H01F38/00; amplifiers H03F
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/746 Alarms related to a physiological condition, e.g. details of setting alarm thresholds or avoiding false alarms alarms per se G08B
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/36031 using physiological parameters for adjustment
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/37247 User interfaces, e.g. input or presentation means
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation

Abstract

A remote sleep quality detecting system and its method provide a portable detecting device for detecting an examinee'"'"'s physical activity while the examinee is sleeping, analyzing a detected activity signal by a signal processing module to generate a statistical value, and comparing a result of the computed statistical value with a sleep state index to obtain sleep quality information, and then storing the activity signal and the sleep quality information in a storage unit. The system and method also provide a remote monitoring device including a sleep information reading module for providing a user interface, connecting the portable detecting device via the Internet and receiving the sleep quality information produced by the portable detecting device after a command from the portable detecting device is received, such that the examinee'"'"'s sleep quality information can be examined from a remote location for a long term without disturbing the examinee'"'"'s sleep.

Claims

1. A remote sleep quality detecting system, comprising:

a portable detecting device, comprising;

at least one signal detector for continuously detecting a physical activity of an examinee while the examinee is sleeping, and for generating an activity signal, wherein the signal detector includes a body activity detection pad provided for detecting body activity while the examinee is sleeping, and the activity signal is a body activity signal;

a signal processing module for receiving the activity signal, and for analyzing and computing the activity signal, the signal processing module comprising;

a memory unit for storing a variation threshold, a computation equation and a sleep state index;

an analysis module for analyzing variation of slopes of the activity signal'"'"'s waveform over time, and generating a statistical value of each time period by accumulating time corresponding to the slopes being greater than the variation threshold within the time period according to the classification and statistics of the variation of the activity signal; and

a computation module for receiving and computing the statistical value of each of the time period according to the computation equation, and comparing a computed result with at least one sleep state index to generate sleep quality information, wherein the computation equation is a weighted computation equation that gives less significance to the statistical value corresponding to earlier time period;

a storage unit for storing the activity signal and the sleep quality information received by the signal processing module; and

a network transmission unit for transmitting the sleep quality information via a network; and

a remote monitoring device for monitoring the sleep quality information of the examinee from a remote location via the network, and comprising;

a sleep quality reading module for providing a user interface to receive a connection instruction to connect the portable detecting device, reading and displaying the sleep quality information at the user interface,

whereby the sleep quality information of the examinee can be observed from a remote location by a distributed network structure, and the sleep quality of the examinee can be analyzed further according to the sleep quality information.

2. The remote sleep quality detecting system of claim 1, wherein the signal processing module further comprises:

a signal pre-processing module for digitizing and filtering the activity signal, and sampling the activity signal.

3. The remote sleep quality detecting system of claim 1, wherein the sleep quality reading module further comprises:

a browse module for accessing an application server system to provide the user interface.

4. The remote sleep quality detecting system of claim 1, wherein the body activity detection pad detects an upper arm movement, a body activity or a leg movement of the examinee, and the body activity signal is an upper arm activity signal, a body activity signal or a leg activity signal.

5. The remote sleep quality detecting system of claim 1, further comprising:

an alarm receiving unit for receiving an alarm notice transmitted from the network transmission unit through the portable detecting device, such that an abnormal occurrence of the activity signal during the examinee'"'"'s sleep is known.

6. The remote sleep quality detecting system of claim 5, wherein the alarm receiving unit is a mobile communication device or an email.

7. The remote sleep quality detecting system of claim 1, wherein the sleep quality information read by the sleep quality reading module is the current sleep quality information or history sleep quality information.