Monitoring Breathing Signals in Sleep Apnea Patients Using LabVIEW

Allison CampbellBearden High School

Young Scholars Summer Program23 July 2015

University of Tennessee

Sleep Apnea Defined:

• Disruption of breathing during sleep

• Chronic disorder

• Disruptions may last up to a few seconds to

several minutes depending on severity

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Types of Sleep Apnea:

Obstructive Sleep Apnea

• More common type

• Temporary collapsed airway

Central Sleep Apnea

• Our focus

• Underdeveloped brain of infant

neglects to send signals to the

respiratory system during sleep

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The Problem:

• Sleep Apnea is a common, life-threatening health

issue.

• Infants often succumb from Central Sleep Apnea,

and nurses and hospital staff cannot constantly

monitor each and every child.

One of the leading causes of death infants

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Current Treatment

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Mandibular Advancement Device (MAD)

Tongue Retaining Device

Objective

To create a system that alerts caregivers when

pediatric patients’ breathing signals are shallower

than normal.

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LabVIEW

• Defined: A Visual

Programming System

• Used for Data Acquisition

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Project Overview

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In this project I developed a program on the Block Diagram

(back panel) that will continuously monitor the simulated breathing

signals (from the DAQ card-waveform generator) of sleep apnea

patients. If a signal is not detected for longer than 20 seconds, the

code will trigger an alarm that would awake the sleep apnea

conditioned child in the hospital bed. I created a LabVIEW front panel

from where the caregiver in the hospital can easily monitor the child’s

current breathing signals.

Program on Block Diagram

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What caregivers will see and use:

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Why is the Program Important?

• Sleep Apnea affects 48 million people nationwide.

• It is a chronic disorder that may lead to other

serious health risks, such as stroke.

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The Path Forward

• Pairing this program with the proper sensors to

attach to the patient and connected to the monitor

• Clinical Trials

• Using this method to monitor other types of

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported primarily by the ERC Program of the National Science Foundation and DOE under NSF Award Number EEC-1041877.Other US government and industrial sponsors of CURENT research are also gratefully acknowledged.

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Questions and Answers

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