Prediction of Sleep Apnea Events Using a CNN–Transformer Network and Contactless Breathing Vibration Signals

It is estimated that globally 425 million subjects have moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The accurate prediction of sleep apnea events can offer insight into the development of treatment therapies. However, research related to this prediction is currently limited. We developed a covert framework for the prediction of sleep apnea events based on low-frequency breathing-induced vibrations obtained from piezoelectric sensors. A CNN-transformer network was utilized to efficiently extract local and global features from respiratory vibration signals for accurate prediction. Our study involved overnight recordings of 105 subjects. In five-fold cross-validation, we achieved an accuracy of 85.9% and an F1 score of 85.8%, which are 3.5% and 5.3% higher than the best-performed classical model, respectively. Additionally, in leave-one-out cross-validation, 2.3% and 3.8% improvements are observed, respectively. Our proposed CNN-transformer model is effective in the prediction of sleep apnea events. Our framework can thus provide a new perspective for improving OSA treatment modes and clinical management.