Detection of breathing sounds during sleep using non-contact audio recordings

Evaluation of respiratory activity during sleep is essential in order to reliably diagnose sleep disorder breathing (SDB); a condition associated with serious cardio-vascular morbidity and mortality. In the current study, we developed and validated a robust automatic breathing-sounds (i.e. inspiratory and expiratory sounds) detection system of audio signals acquired during sleep. Random forest classifier was trained and tested using inspiratory/expiratory/noise events (episodes), acquired from 84 subjects consecutively and prospectively referred to SDB diagnosis in sleep laboratory and in at-home environment. More than 560,000 events were analyzed, including a variety of recording devices and different environments. The system´s overall accuracy rate is 88.8%, with accuracy rate of 91.2% and 83.6% in in-laboratory and at-home environments respectively, when classifying between inspiratory, expiratory, and noise classes. Here, we provide evidence that breathing-sounds can be reliably detected using non-contact audio technology in at-home environment. The proposed approach may improve our understanding of respiratory activity during sleep. This in return, will improve early SDB diagnosis and treatment.