Ambulatory Recording and Power Spectral Analysis by Autoregressive Modelling of Polygraphic Sleep Signals in Patients Suffering from Chronic Pain

Abstract:

A portable digital recording system and the Nightingale sleep analyser have been applied to record polygraphical sleep signals in patients suffering from chronic pain. Using ambulatory recording the patient can sleep at home making the sleep more natural and reducing the costs. The recording system gives digital recordings of very good quality. It is shown that the Nightingale sleep analyser performs automatic sleep analysis with a quality comparable to visual interrater performance on disordered sleep. It furthermore provides means for extraction of spectral information useful for the description of the sleep-wakefulness processes and for diagnosing the sleep disorders. Using AR-model-based power spectral analysis, it is also shown that the power content in the alpha band relative to the delta power is significantly higher in patients suffering from non-specific chronic pain as compared to normal persons.

Keywords

Ambulatory Recordings - Chronic Pain Disorders - Automatic Interpretation - Nightingale Sleep Analyser - Power Spectral Analysis - Auto-regressive Modelling

• REFERENCES

• 1 Rechtschaffen A, Kales A. A Manual of Standardised Terminology, Techniques, and Scoring System for Sleep Stages of Human Subjects.. Washington DC: Brain Information Service/Brain Research Institute; 1968: 1-60.
• 2 Kubicki S, Hermann WM, Holler L. Critical comments on the rules by Rechtschaffen and Kales concerning the visual evaluation of EEG sleep records. In: Kubicki S, Herman WM. eds. Methods of Sleep Research.. Berlin: Fischer; 1985
• 3 Moldofsky H. Sleep and fibrositis syndrome. Rheumatic Disease Clinics of North America 1989; 15: 91-103.
• 4 Nielsen KD, Drewes AM, Jennum P, Andrea-sen A. Quantitative analysis of alpha intrusion of deep sleep in fibromyalgia. J Sleep Research 1992; 01 (Suppl. 01) 160.
• 5 Wittig RM, Zorick FJ, Blumen D, Heilbronn M, Roth T. Disturbed sleep in patients complaining of chronic pain. J Nerv Ment Dis 1982; 170: 429-31.
• 6 Hauri P, Hawkins DR. Alpha-delta sleep. Electroenceph Clin Neurophys 1973; 34: 233-7.
• 7 Judex Amplifier System. Documentation of the portable amplifier system for the Nightingale sleep analyser. Judex Datasystemer, Aal-borg. 1992
• 8 Nielsen KD. Computer Assisted Sleep Analy-sis (Ph.D. Thesis). Aalborg University; 1993