A dual-model deep learning method for sleep apnea detection based on representation learning and temporal dependence

Sleep apnea (SA) is a sleep-breathing disorder accompanied by multiple complications. The SA detection method based on a single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) has the characteristics of low power consumption and is desirable for the development of wearable equipment. This study proposed a dual-model deep learning method to perform representation learning and introduce long-term temporal dependence. First, the Christov algorithm was used to obtain the RR interval (RRI) of each 1-minute ECG segment, and the adaptive synthetic (ADASYN) sampling method was employed to synthesize the RRI series of the minority class to address the imbalanced learning problem. Then, a representation learning model based on the one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1DCNN-RLM) was built to extract the feature vector of the RRI series. Eventually, a temporal dependence model based on the bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU-TDM) was constructed to learn the state (SA/normal) transition pattern between the segments and complete the classification task. We employed the apnea-ECG database for experiments. For per segment detection results, the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of this method were 91.1%, 88.9%, and 92.4%, respectively. The per-recording detection accuracy reached 100%. ADASYN alleviates the imbalance of sensitivity and specificity in classification results. The 1DCNN-RLM with powerful representation learning ability has extracted discriminative features. The BiGRU-TDM introduces the long-term time dependence of SA and improves classification performance. The results of this study substantiate that the proposed method is robust and has good transferability. This method provides a reference for the diagnosis of other diseases. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

A dual-model deep learning method for sleep apnea detection based on ECG data was proposed in this study, showing good classification performance. The ADASYN method alleviated the imbalance issue in classification results, the 1DCNN-RLM extracted discriminative features, and the BiGRU-TDM introduced time dependence, further improving the classification performance.