MotionWare Sleep Analysis
Advanced Actigraphy Software Tools
Actigraphy is a well-established method for monitoring of sleep quality and circadian stability. The Motionwatch has been used in cutting edge research for many years and our Research Library provides a comprehensive list of scientific publications citing its use.
The Sleep analysis function within the MotionWare software is designed to provide a number of objective key sleep measures from overnight actigraphy data. It uses legacy Actiwatch-compatible activity counts to apply existing published algorithms for measures on actigraphy data. It can be easily applied either to normal overnight periods, or used to examine any sleep period from an altered phase recording such as a shift worker.
The Sleep Analysis Window
For each night of sleep, the bed times and get-up times are entered (either manually, graphically or automatically) and the software automatically determines the sleep start and end times. The analysis then utilises the night-time movement data to determine the quality of sleep and provide a list of key sleep parameters.
Key Sleep Parameters
The list below includes many of the key outcome parameters derived from actigraphy for each night of sleep.
- Time in bed: The total elapsed time between the “Lights Out” and “Got Up” times.
- Assumed sleep: The total elapsed time between the “Fell Asleep” and “Woke Up” times.
- Actual sleep time: The total time spent in sleep according to the epoch-by-epoch wake/sleep categorisation.
- Actual sleep (%): Actual sleep time expressed as a percentage of the assumed sleep time.
- Actual wake time: The total time spent in wake according to the epoch-by-epoch wake/sleep categorisation.
- Actual wake (%): Actual wake time expressed as a percentage of the assumed sleep time.
- Sleep efficiency (%): Actual sleep time expressed as a percentage of time in bed.
- Sleep latency: The time between “Lights Out” and “Fell Asleep”.
- Sleep bouts: The number of contiguous sections categorised as sleep in the epoch-by-epoch wake/sleep categorisation.
- Wake bouts: The number of contiguous sections categorised as wake in the epoch-by-epoch wake/sleep categorisation.
- Mean sleep bout: The average length of each of the sleep bouts.
- Mean wake bout: The average length of each of the wake bouts.
- Immobile mins: The total time categorised as Immobile in the epoch-by-epoch mobile/immobile categorisation.
- Immobile time (%): The immobile time expressed as a percentage of the assumed sleep time.
- Mobile mins: The total time categorised as mobile in the epoch-by-epoch mobile/immobile categorisation.
- Mobile time (%): The mobile time expressed as a percentage of the assumed sleep time.
- Immobile bouts: The number of contiguous sections categorised as immobile in the epoch-by-epoch mobile/immobile categorisation.
- Mean immobile bout: The average length of each of the immobile bouts.
- Immobile bouts <=1min: The number of immobile bouts which were less than or equal to one minute in length.
- Immobile bouts <=1min (%): The number of immobile bouts less than or equal to one minute expressed as a percentage of the total number of immobile bouts.
- Total activity score: The total of all the activity counts during the assumed sleep period.
- Mean activity /epoch: The total activity score divided by the number of epochs in the assumed sleep period. Note that this result will be expected to scale depending on the length of the epoch.
- Mean nonzero activity epoch: The total activity score divided by the number of epochs with greater than zero activity in the assumed sleep period. Note that this result will be expected to scale depending on the length of the epoch.
- Fragmentation Index: The sum of the “Mobile time (%)” and the “Immobile bouts <=1min (%)”. This is an indication of the degree of fragmentation of the sleep period, and can be used as an indication of sleep quality (or the lack of it).
Auto-Sleep
The Auto-Sleep function is a productivity tool that automatically detects the main sleep period, marks sleep start/end and saves each night of sleep analysis with a single mouse click. Custom configuration allows the sensitivity parameters to be adjusted prior to running auto-sleep. It is always recommended to review the saved sleep periods to ensure accuracy and synchroncity with any sleep diary.
Sleep Reports
The Reports Generator within MotionWare provides a flexible configuration tool to build your reports. Options allow recording properties, markers, sleep data and actograms to be included. Additional filter tools allow the individual parameters and settings to be controlled to tailor the report to your own requirements.
Having configured your reports, there are multiple options for output including copy to clipboard, print, copy to word processor, save as pdf, rtf, doc or odt formats. The word processor friendly formats allow you to further edit and customise your reports if required.
The sleep analysis also allows epoch-by-epoch data to be exported in addition to bulk export tools which are useful in large scale studies.
Example Sleep Report
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