Sleep disturbances are among the most distressing of all Alzheimer's disease related symptoms. In some cases, however, the sleep disturbance may be a marker for early Alzheimer's disease. In this paper we present a sleep pattern detection and visualization system developed to support the monitoring of sleep patterns and assessment of sleep disturbances for people diagnosed with dementia, at the early stages of the disease. The system provides visual tool kits for caregivers to view the sleep profiles and for investigators to analyse sleep patterns based on sensory data gathered at users' home via the telecare service.

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Introduction: It is estimated that around 820,000 people in the UK have dementia. Telecare and assistive technology (AT) can support people with dementia living at home.Objectives: This research aims to monitor and study night time activity patterns of people with early dementia (PwD) at home using AT, to detect abnormal patterns and to investigate whether the changes of activity profiles can be used as an indicator of the changes of cognitive function.Methods: AT sensors were installed at three houses of people with dementia. Client activities are monitored and stored in a database. Information related to sleeping and movement patterns such as total sleep hours, sleep episodes, sleep rhythms, total movement time and movement episodes are retrieved for the detection of behaviours that may constitute non-normal activity and to help visualise trends.Results: Sleep disturbance and wandering were observed in PwD. While an individual's sleep wandering patterns were generally consistent over a period of time, some days of abnormal behaviour were detected and the trend of changes were visualised.