We propose a fully parametric approach to the assessment of sleep architecture, based upon the classical electroencephalographic criteria, applicable also to the recordings of patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC). Sleep spindles and slow waves are automatically detected from the matching pursuit decomposition of overnight EEG recordings. Their evolution can be presented in the form of EEG profiles, yielding a continuous description of sleep architecture, compatible with the classical criteria used in sleep staging. We propose assessment of these EEG profiles by five parameters, which can be combined by a linear classifier, assessing the quality of sleep architecture. Proposed methodology is evaluated on 59 overnight EEG recordings from 19 patients from a hospital for children with severe brain damage, in relation to their behavioral diagnosis according to the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised. Presented results indicate robustness of the proposed approach, which may serve as a valuable aid in diagnosis of DOC patients. Complete software environment for computing and presentation of EEG profiles is freely available from http://svarog.pl .
