Contactless Sleep Monitoring with Potential Application to Early Autism Detection

Contactless Sleep Monitoring with Potential Application to Early Autism Detection | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Contactless Sleep Monitoring with Potential Application to Early Autism Detection Muhammad Farooq, Hira Hameed, Balal Saleemi, Ahmad Taha, Dena Al-Thani, and 4 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7280009/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract patients, diagnosing chronic conditions, and enable behavioural detection of autism. Existing methods, particularly visionbased and wearable systems, face limitations including privacy concerns, sensitivity to lighting and occlusion, complexity in handling long video sequences, and neurodivergent users discomfort. To address these challenges, this study proposes a privacy-preserving, contactless sleep monitoring system that leverages ultra-wideband (UWB) radar and lightweight deep learning (DL) architectures. The system performs multi-class micro-Doppler-based classification of nine fine-grained sleep activities: body left, body right, feet move, hand move, head left, head right, static head left, static head right, and static head up. These postures are of relevance in identifying subtle behavioural indicators associated with early-stage autism, offering potential for preclinical behavioural screening. A comparative evaluation is conducted using DL models, VGG16, VGG19, MobileNet, and SqueezeNet, on radar-derived datasets. Among these, the VGG16 model achieves the highest classification accuracy of 84.6% on the combined dataset. The results confirm the feasibility of deploying accurate and efficient models in real-world, low-resource healthcare settings, without compromising user privacy or comfort. Biomedical Engineering Cognitive Neuroscience Autism Contactless monitoring Deep learning Micro-doppler RF sensing Sleep pattern. Full Text Additional Declarations The authors declare no competing interests. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-7280009","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":494762026,"identity":"d881827d-3353-44a9-9ab8-d51b87b33021","order_by":0,"name":"Muhammad Farooq","email":"data:image/png;base64,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","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6710-753X","institution":"University of Glasgow","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Muhammad","middleName":"","lastName":"Farooq","suffix":""},{"id":494762027,"identity":"6821da45-5667-4491-92ce-96b05b11ee80","order_by":1,"name":"Hira Hameed","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Glasgow","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Hira","middleName":"","lastName":"Hameed","suffix":""},{"id":494762156,"identity":"27305bf9-e171-468d-963f-5f73052ea6f7","order_by":2,"name":"Balal Saleemi","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Glasgow","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Balal","middleName":"","lastName":"Saleemi","suffix":""},{"id":494762157,"identity":"11db329c-d037-479b-b9fc-7330a2ef318b","order_by":3,"name":"Ahmad Taha","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Glasgow","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Ahmad","middleName":"","lastName":"Taha","suffix":""},{"id":494762158,"identity":"94d17ce9-9a24-4b94-ac61-7b90aca05fcf","order_by":4,"name":"Dena Al-Thani","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Hamad Bin Khalifa University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Dena","middleName":"","lastName":"Al-Thani","suffix":""},{"id":494762159,"identity":"8bf281b2-e9a9-46a2-8af9-aad489dc75e9","order_by":5,"name":"Marwa Qaraqe","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Hamad Bin Khalifa University","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Marwa","middleName":"","lastName":"Qaraqe","suffix":""},{"id":494762160,"identity":"7d25e41f-ad64-407d-9be9-29f02f711a26","order_by":6,"name":"Muhammad Ali Imran","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Glasgow","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Muhammad","middleName":"Ali","lastName":"Imran","suffix":""},{"id":494762161,"identity":"6b1cc678-20d2-42ed-849e-293e87921da4","order_by":7,"name":"Hasan Abbas","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Glasgow","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Hasan","middleName":"","lastName":"Abbas","suffix":""},{"id":494762162,"identity":"4ce132f3-44e8-4a47-9e2f-fa66eabbf686","order_by":8,"name":"Qammer H. 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