The deployment of a non-intrusive alternative to sleep/wake wrist actigraphy in a home-based study of the elderly

This paper reports on experimental trials with an Under Mattress Bed Sensor (UMBS), an easily deployable, non-contact, low cost alternative to the actigraphy watch for sleep monitoring. Results from a home-based study of elderly subjects confirm accurate temporal resolution of activity monitoring in bed. UMBS activity classification thresholds were determined by maximizing Matthew´s Correlation Coefficient between the activity data captured using an actigraphy watch and the proposed sensor. Preliminary results on a healthy young subject showed very high agreement rates justifying its use as a replacement for wrist actigraphy.