The Comparison between Fitbit Alta HR and Polysomnography in Monitoring Sleep of Young Adults

As an alternative to Polysomnography (PSG), Fitbit Alta HR (Fitbit) could provide an easier way to monitor sleep. Since the accuracy of Fitbit sleep monitoring is unknown, this study was conducted to compare the sleep monitoring performance of Fitbit and PSG. Nine healthy young adults (5 males and 4 females; 24 ± 2 years old; Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index < 5) were tested on three nights with different environmental conditions (different sleep measurements were detected by PSG).

Paired T-test and Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) were performed for discrepancy and agreement analysis for sleep measurements. Results showed that the agreement between PSG and Fitbit was excellent for Total Recording Time (TRT, ICC=0.901), moderate for Total Sleep Time (TST, ICC=0.721) and Sleep Onset Latency (SOL, ICC=0.622), close to moderate for Sleep Efficiency (SE, ICC=0.443) and Wake after Sleep Onset (WASO, ICC=0.466), poor for Number of Awakenings (NOA, ICC=0.185), REM Sleep (ICC=0.085), Light Sleep (ICC=0.177) and Deep Sleep (ICC=0.054).

The present results indicated that Fitbit showed promise in measuring TRT, TST, SE, SOL and WASO, but had a poor performance in sleep staging for monitoring sleep of young adults.