Could it be possible to find out if you have a sleep disorder without spending a night in a sleep lab?
Researchers at Florida State University and Stevens Institute of Technology are working hard to make that dream come true for many people who just don’t feel like going through the hassle of being hooked up to monitors to be watched all night, and can appreciate saving their hard earned cash, but still get the help they need.
According to MIT Technology Review, the team has created a technology to track your breathing while you sleep at night. All you’ll have to do is wear a pair of earphones equipped with a microphone, place your smartphone on your beside table and then tuck in for shut-eye.
Over a six month period, 6 volunteers plugged the ground breaking earphones into their iPhones, which recorded sounds as they slept every night. While the earphones work best on a pillow or worn, even when placed on a bedside table, the researchers were able to monitor the volunteers’ breathing to within a half a breath per minute, compared to what a chest-worn monitor and clipped on microphone would have picked up.
In testing the sensitivity of the microphone-equipped headphones, the researchers were able to make changes to filter out unwanted noise to focus on breathing, snoring, coughing and other nighttime indicators of sleep problems.
With the app scheduled to be made available next year, Yingying Chen, an associate at Stevens, says that there is hope that this technology can easily diagnose sleep disorders. He stands by the fact that it can be difficult for doctors to fully monitor irregular sleeping patterns with sensors attached to a patient’s body, on top of them being in an impersonal setting.
Hopefully, as technology such as this one continues to come about, the number of undiagnosed sleep disorders will drastically reduce in our nation. What do you think about this new app? Would you be willing to skip the sleep lab and give these earphones a shot?
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