DEPTracker – Sleep Pattern Tracking with Accelerometer Technology

REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep pattern changes are known to be an early indicator of effective medical treatment of patients with a depression diagnosis. Existing methods to detect REM sleep pattern changes are known to be inaccurate, costly, or otherwise inadequate in normal settings of this patient group. In this paper, we demonstrate DEPTracker, a system capable of detecting sleep patterns, and in particular REM sleep. We show that DEPTracker is an accurate, cost-effective and suitable approach for sleep pattern detection in general. Details of the technology used, combining accelerometer technology with digital signal analysis is given and illustrates that the system is able to successfully detect REM sleep. The project demonstrates that accelerometers can be mounted on an eye lid and eye movements can be detected, sampled and stored in a database for online real-time analysis or post-sleep data analysis. Furthermore, DEPTracker has the potential for other types of measurements, such as anaesthetic depth analysis.