The two-bed sleep study facility is located in Michigan Tech University’s Student Development Complex.
Both of the sleep rooms in the new facility not only have the capabilities of the overnight polysomnography (PSG) and electroencephalography (EEG), but also take simultaneous measurements of beat-by-beat blood pressure through finger plethysmography, which constantly records blood pressure throughout the night; pulse oximetry, which measures oxygen content in the blood throughout the night; and transcutaneous carbon dioxide levels from the skin.
The facility meets all of the physical requirements to seek a sleep study center accreditation from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Additionally, researchers are working with sleep study software company Natus to add blood pressure readings to its suite of monitored biometric signals. Perhaps most cutting edge, is the team’s interdisciplinary approach to sleep research that includes biomedical engineering signal processing techniques applied to physiology. In the future, the Michigan Tech Sleep Research Laboratory plans to prove the importance of Big Data in the field of sleep research.
