Non-contact Infant Sleep Apnea Detection

Gihan Jayatilaka, Harshana Weligampola, Suren Sritharan, Pankayraj Pathmanathan, Roshan G. Ragel, Isuru Nawinne

Abstract: Sleep apnea is a breathing disorder where a person repeatedly stops breathing in sleep. Early detection is crucial for infants because it might bring long term adversities. The existing accurate detection mechanism (pulse oximetry) is a skin contact measurement. The existing non-contact mechanisms (acoustics, video processing) are not accurate enough. This paper presents a novel algorithm for detecting sleep apnea with video processing. The solution is non-contact, accurate and lightweight enough to run on a single board computer. The paper discusses the accuracy of the algorithm on real data, advantages of the new algorithm, its limitations and suggests future improvements.