Patent ID: 8369940

Claim:
A method for monitoring physiological information relating to sleep comprising: sensing physiological information; detecting a plurality of half waves in the sensed physiological information based on a local maximum amplitude and a subsequent local minimum amplitude, or based on a local minimum amplitude and a subsequent local maximum amplitude; determining a duration and an amplitude of each half wave of the plurality of detected half waves; binning each half wave into a bin of a plurality of different bins based on the determined duration and the amplitude of the half wave, wherein the determined duration is within a range of a plurality of different duration ranges and the determined amplitude of the half wave is within a range of a plurality of different amplitude ranges, each bin being characterized by a duration range having a preset minimum duration threshold and a preset maximum duration threshold and an amplitude range having a preset minimum amplitude threshold and a preset maximum amplitude threshold; counting, for each bin of the plurality of different bins, a number of occurrences of half waves within the bin; and determining a detection of an occurrence of at least one sleep state or stage if the number of occurrences of half waves within specified bins corresponds to the at least one sleep state or stage.