Pneumology services

Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg (FAU)

Overview This service provides sleep monitoring and analysis utilizing a combination of medical-grade clinical equipment and non-contact sensing technology in a controlled sleep laboratory environment. The facility is centered around a hospital bed equipped with a full-scale polysomnography (PSG) system to collect electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG), photoplethysmography (PPG), electromyography (EMG), respiration, and motion data. Simultaneously, an array of high-frequency radar sensors installed beneath the mattress records cardiorespiratory micro-movements, while a night-vision camera tracks facial expressions and body posture during sleep. The aim of the service is to provide synchronized reference data and non-contact measurements for sleep staging, detection of sleep disorders (such as sleep apnea, snoring, and restless limb movement), and the evaluation of sleep-monitoring systems. How can the service help you? Developing and testing sleep-monitoring devices, mattress sensors, or contactless algorithm models requires validated, full-night clinical reference data. This service solves the challenge of obtaining simultaneous clinical polysomnography and experimental non-contact radar data. Clients without access to a specialized sleep lab receive synchronized datasets containing ground-truth PSG sleep staging alongside contactless radar signals and night-vision video. This allows companies to train sleep-staging algorithms, validate contactless heart rate and respiration tracking, and test non-wearable sleep diagnostic solutions against medical-grade standards. How will the service be delivered? The service is offered in person at the sleep analysis laboratory in Erlangen, Germany. Overnight recording sessions are organized in accordance with standard sleep study protocols. Laboratory staff manage participant onboarding, PSG electrode placement, sensor setup beneath the mattress, and camera alignment. Following the recording session, data are processed, synchronized, and delivered to the client, along with standard PSG sleep-staging reports. Provider description Operating from the Department of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, we are a service provider node within the TEF-Health consortium. The research group specializes in machine learning, biomedical signal processing, and multimodal sensor synchronization. Our team provides testing infrastructure and scientific support for evaluating medical devices, wearables, and contactless sensing systems. Technical details: The laboratory utilizes a hospital bed environment integrated with multiple synchronized measurement modalities: 1. Polysomnography (PSG): A Somnomedics PSG system serves as the clinical reference, recording EEG, ECG, PPG, EMG (muscle activity), respiration, accelerometry, and ambient sound via microphones for sleep staging and sleep disorder assessment (e.g., sleep apnea, restless legs/arms). 2. Non-Contact Radar Array: A multi-node array of 61 GHz continuous-wave radar units (EmRad system, Technical University Hamburg; Albrecht et al., 2024) is positioned beneath the bed mattress to measure heart rate, respiratory effort, and body movements without direct skin contact. 3. Visual Recording: A night-vision camera is mounted to enable facial expression analysis and posture tracking during low-light and dark overnight conditions. 4. Software: Data acquisition, signal filtering, and clinical sleep staging are executed using Somnomedics Analyze alongside custom signal-processing scripts for radar data extraction. Service customization: The study configuration can be customized based on specific research objectives. Clients can opt to utilize the full PSG array for comprehensive clinical validation or select a subset of sensors (e.g., respiration and ECG channels only) to adjust setup duration. Sensor placement, radar array density, and video resolution can be configured according to project specifications.