Drowsiness discrimination in an overnight driving simulation on the basis of RR and QT intervals

Abstract: We examined if ECG-based features are discrimi-native towards drowsiness. Twenty-five volunteers (19–32 years) completed 7×40 minutes of monotonous overnight driving simulation, designed to induce drowsiness. ECG (512 s-1) was recorded continuously; subjective ratings of drowsiness on the Karolinska sleepiness scale (KSS) were polled every five minutes. ECG recordings were divided into 5-min segments, each associated with the mean of one self- and two observer-KSS ratings. Those mean KSS values were binarized to obtain two classes not drowsy and drowsy. The Q-, R- and T-waves in the recordings were detected; R-peak positions were manually reviewed; the Q- and T-detection method was tested against the manual annotations of Physio-net’s QT database. Power spectral densities of RR intervals (RR-PSD) and quantiles of the empirical distribution of heart-rate corrected QTc intervals were estimated. Support-vector machines and random-holdout cross-validation were used for the estimation of the classification error. Using either RR-PSD or QTc features yielded mean test errors of 79.3 ± 0.3 % and 82.7 ± 0.5 %, respectively. Merging RR and QTc features improved the accuracy to 88.3 ± 0.2 %. QTc intervals of the class drowsy were generally prolonged com-pared to not drowsy. Our findings indicate that the inclusion of QT intervals contribute to the discrimination of driver sleepiness.

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Drowsiness discrimination in an overnight driving simulation on the basis of RR and QT intervals ; volume:3 ; number:2 ; year:2017 ; pages:563-567 ; extent:5 ; Current directions in biomedical engineering ; 3, Heft 2 (2017), 563-567 (gesamt 5)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Heinze, Christian ; Hütterer, Constantin ; Schnupp, Thomas ; Lenis, Gustavo ; Golz, Martin

Further information

• DOI: 10.1515/cdbme-2017-0117
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2023030713234154843387
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 14.08.2025, 10:52 AM CEST