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Anomaly detection in sleep: detecting mouth breathing in children

Anomaly detection in sleep: detecting mouth breathing in children
Anomaly detection in sleep: detecting mouth breathing in children

Identifying mouth breathing during sleep in a reliable, non-invasive way is challenging and currently not included in sleep studies. However, it has a high clinical relevance in pediatrics, as it can negatively impact the physical and mental health of children. Since mouth breathing is an anomalous condition in the general population with only 2% prevalence in our data set, we are facing an anomaly detection problem. This type of human medical data is commonly approached with deep learning methods. However, applying multiple supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods to this anomaly detection problem showed that classic machine learning methods should also be taken into account. This paper compared deep learning and classic machine learning methods on respiratory data during sleep using a leave-one-out cross validation. This way we observed the uncertainty of the models and their performance across participants with varying signal quality and prevalence of mouth breathing. The main contribution is identifying the model with the highest clinical relevance to facilitate the diagnosis of chronic mouth breathing, which may allow more affected children to receive appropriate treatment.

Anomaly detection, Machine learning, Mouth breathing, Sleep
1384-5810
976-1005
Biedebach, Luka
35f63dbe-4f6f-4f27-b007-52708d3a89af
Óskarsdóttir, María
d159ed8f-9dd3-4ff3-8b00-d43579ab71be
Arnardóttir, Erna Sif
9bfbbe32-8214-47a9-86ba-43be85458830
Sigurdardóttir, Sigridur
b2681eff-160f-4742-b160-487912bac9e5
Clausen, Michael Valur
9275daa0-c236-4c36-99f5-2ba7a84ceb0d
Sigurdardóttir, Sigurveig
768a2385-c0c4-4281-84b3-1346fcd7217b
Serwatko, Marta
27ae6444-8871-4220-b849-40c1834ab0ca
Islind, Anna Sigridur
46e6353f-a1b6-4628-916c-18e817695d03
Biedebach, Luka
35f63dbe-4f6f-4f27-b007-52708d3a89af
Óskarsdóttir, María
d159ed8f-9dd3-4ff3-8b00-d43579ab71be
Arnardóttir, Erna Sif
9bfbbe32-8214-47a9-86ba-43be85458830
Sigurdardóttir, Sigridur
b2681eff-160f-4742-b160-487912bac9e5
Clausen, Michael Valur
9275daa0-c236-4c36-99f5-2ba7a84ceb0d
Sigurdardóttir, Sigurveig
768a2385-c0c4-4281-84b3-1346fcd7217b
Serwatko, Marta
27ae6444-8871-4220-b849-40c1834ab0ca
Islind, Anna Sigridur
46e6353f-a1b6-4628-916c-18e817695d03

Biedebach, Luka, Óskarsdóttir, María, Arnardóttir, Erna Sif, Sigurdardóttir, Sigridur, Clausen, Michael Valur, Sigurdardóttir, Sigurveig, Serwatko, Marta and Islind, Anna Sigridur (2023) Anomaly detection in sleep: detecting mouth breathing in children. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 38 (3), 976-1005. (doi:10.1007/s10618-023-00985-x).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Identifying mouth breathing during sleep in a reliable, non-invasive way is challenging and currently not included in sleep studies. However, it has a high clinical relevance in pediatrics, as it can negatively impact the physical and mental health of children. Since mouth breathing is an anomalous condition in the general population with only 2% prevalence in our data set, we are facing an anomaly detection problem. This type of human medical data is commonly approached with deep learning methods. However, applying multiple supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods to this anomaly detection problem showed that classic machine learning methods should also be taken into account. This paper compared deep learning and classic machine learning methods on respiratory data during sleep using a leave-one-out cross validation. This way we observed the uncertainty of the models and their performance across participants with varying signal quality and prevalence of mouth breathing. The main contribution is identifying the model with the highest clinical relevance to facilitate the diagnosis of chronic mouth breathing, which may allow more affected children to receive appropriate treatment.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 3 October 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 13 November 2023
Additional Information: Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2023.
Keywords: Anomaly detection, Machine learning, Mouth breathing, Sleep

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 508392
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/508392
ISSN: 1384-5810
PURE UUID: c2b9f62d-1260-4575-864b-7991358dbc7f
ORCID for María Óskarsdóttir: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5095-5356

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Date deposited: 20 Jan 2026 17:52
Last modified: 21 Jan 2026 03:11

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Contributors

Author: Luka Biedebach
Author: María Óskarsdóttir ORCID iD
Author: Erna Sif Arnardóttir
Author: Sigridur Sigurdardóttir
Author: Michael Valur Clausen
Author: Sigurveig Sigurdardóttir
Author: Marta Serwatko
Author: Anna Sigridur Islind

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