Feasibility Study of a Novel Method of Contactless Radar Sensing for Sleep Monitoring across Adolescence (8-18yrs): Ambient-Teens

Healthy sleep plays an important role in adolescent development and links between sleep, physical and mental health outcomes remain poorly understood. To capture normative trends and abnormal changes, we need methods of sleep measurement used continuously over long time-frames. Wearable devices are the most common objective method as an affordable and less invasive alternative to gold-standard polysomnography. However, wearables are not always well-tolerated by young people impacting adherence and sleep, hence, study designs typically collect data for 1–2 weeks. This study aimed to test the feasibility of radar sensing for assessment of sleep, in children and adolescents (8–18 years), and compare performance against standard objective (wrist accelerometery) and subjective (sleep diary) methods. Radar data were collected over four weeks with two concurrent weeks including accelerometer and sleep diary data. Following data cleaning, usable data from the radar sensor was significantly higher (86%) compared to accelerometer (61%; p < 0.05), with particularly low accelerometer adherence noted among boys. Radar showed good agreement with accelerometer data for sleep onset (mean difference − 0.96 minutes, 95% limits of agreement: -123.16 to 121.24) and wake times (mean difference 4.53 minutes, 95% limits of agreement: -69.45, 78.51), however, poor agreement for total sleep time (mean difference 38.96 minutes, 95% limits of agreement: -78.40, 156.31). Participant feedback indicated the radar sensor as the preferred method (80% vote). The results of this study support the value of radar sensing as a contactless, continuous, acceptable and passive method for longitudinal assessment of sleep by young people.