SPEARS Algorithm — sleep scoring with just a single EEG channel

The highly sophisticated Sleep Parametric EEG Automated Recognition System Algorithm provides rapid quantification, analysis, and classification of data; prevents the need for manual analysis; and uses the dynamic range of sleep EEGs as a window into brain activity.

By taking a single channel of EEG, SPEARS creates a map of brain activity, indicating the different signatures in waking and sleeping states. SPEARS can represent a night's worth of brain activity in clusters, where every sleep and waking state forms a separate cluster. SPEARS can reliably extract a maximal number of stages in minimal time, using a single channel. This reduces the number of sixteen, eight, or even two channels formerly needed when undergoing an EEG and eliminates the need to visually review data in all those traces. Together, this creates the opportunity for a small, single-channel EEG system that can be performed anywhere, even while driving. Comparison of manual sleep test scoring with automatic scoring from the SPEARS algorithm shows little difference except in the large amount of time and labor saved through the SPEARS technique.

Sleep Studies — using SPEARS for improved sleep analysis

The SPEARS algorithm allows for more efficient, detailed, and less costly sleep studies.

Clinical EEG data acquisition and interpretation is currently cumbersome, time consuming, and error prone. NeuroVigil's technologic advance dramatically improves the quality and lowers the costs of sleep testing. Our technology not only automates current manual tasks, but also more than quadruples the amount of useful information obtained from current EEG data, which leads to neural signatures, or correlates of important disease states, that are useful in early detection and diagnosis of important sleep- related medical conditions as well as diseases of the Central Nervous System, such as Alzheimer, Schizophrenia, Parkinson.s, etc.. The SPEARS algorithm has been proven, using human data, to perform better than current clinical methods at interpreting a night's worth of EEG data, and performs this task that requires 30-60 minutes for an experienced human scorer in seconds.