According to statistics, more than 60% of adults experience sleep disorders. To diagnose the causes of the disorders, you can contact specialized clinics that will monitor your sleep for one or several nights using various inconvenient sensors. This is uncomfortable and often expensive. For example, the gold standard of sleep monitoring - polysomnography - is carried out only in a hospital setting. More compact home devices, including smart watches, can only provide general information about the quality of sleep, but are not able to identify a problem or disease.
“We wanted to create something simple that people could use every night,” said the authors from the University of Cambridge. They designed pyjamas with tiny graphene sensors on the fabric to analyze breathing during sleep. The AI was trained to accurately detect different sleep states, but to ignore regular tossing and turning from one side to the other and from the back to the stomach.
Experiments have shown that pajamas with 99% accuracy diagnosed obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, snoring, mouth breathing, Brusquism and other problems.
The latest version of the prototype can already transmit data via Wi-Fi to a smartphone or computer, which greatly simplifies diagnostics. Scientists are currently working on enhancing the properties of the fabric so that it can be washed in a washing machine.
The development can bring great benefits to patients. For example, apnea is often confused with snoring, so people rarely seek help from a doctor. At the same time, the consequences of this condition (regular pauses in breathing during sleep) for health can be devastating.
Apple previously said it planned to integrate a sensor to detect apnea into the watch. Late last year, the company announced the availability of test diagnostics in the United States, which will gradually appear in other countries. In the near future, it will be possible to evaluate the quality of such diagnostics.
