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Centre for Preterm Birth Studies

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Classifying Neonatal Spells Using Real-Time Temporal Analysis of Physiological Data Streams

Category

Preterm Birth

Sub-Categories

New Technology

Details

Lead: Eugene Ng

Apnea “spells” are common in premature infants. It generally involves a brief stop in breathing, associated with drop in heart rate and oxygen level. Although most are simply related to prematurity, they could also be a sign of significant illness such as infections. By developing a computer algorithm to analyze data on heart rate, respiration, and oxygen saturation so as to accurately classify various types of apnea spells, clinicians may be better informed as to which spells may be more worrisome. The first phase of this study is to validate the algorithm by comparing data to that acquired by a multi-channel sleep study during a single night recording in study infants.