Integrative Computational Intelligence Techniques for Insomnia and Sleep Stage Recognition from ECG Data

Abstract—Insomnia is a common sleep disorder that can lead to serious health problems, including cardiovascular issues. Early and accurate detection is essential for effective treatment, but traditional diagnostic methods are often costly, time-consuming, and prone to human error. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a novel hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) approach for automatic insomnia detection using electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. The method utilizes heart rate variability (HRV) and power spectral density (PSD) analysis in various classification scenarios, including subject- based classification (normal vs. insomnia), sleep stage-based classification (REM vs. wake), and a combined classification approach using both subject and sleep stage features. Ensemble learning techniques, such as random forest (RF) and decision tree (DT) classifiers, are used in the first two scenarios, while linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is applied in the combined classification. The approach includes ECG signal collection, HRV feature extraction, PSD estimation, and classification. Evaluation using the publicly available PhysioNet dataset shows strong performance across all scenarios, with high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. The combined classification scenario, in particular, achieves the highest detection accuracy with LDA. Keywords—HRV Extraction, Sleep Stage, Ensemble, LDA