Grass Technologies
to Introduce Fully Automated Sleep Stager at the ASET Meeting in Las
Vegas, NV
WEST WARWICK, R.I.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 20, 2004--The Grass Technologies
Product Group of Astro-Med, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALOT) will introduce a revolutionary
new automated sleep stager at the American Society of Electroneurodiagnostic
Technologists (ASET) meeting in Las Vegas, NV. The meeting starts on
July 28th, and runs through July 31st, 2004.
Grass Technologies's Fully Automated Sleep Stager (FASS™), which
will be demonstrated at the meeting, is an add-on module for existing
Grass Technologies TWin® PSG review software. FASS software identifies
standard Rechtschaffen and Kales sleep stages automatically, deriving
information from various parameters of the EEG, EOG, and Chin EMG. FASS
is extremely accurate and easy to use. With FASS, a sleep study is completely
staged in less than one minute, providing a great time savings to the
sleep lab.
During an overnight sleep study to determine whether a patient has sleep
apnea or another sleep disorder, the patient's brain waves and other
vital signs are monitored on a recording system such as the Grass Technologies
Comet. Eight hours of recordings are typically done and saved on the
computer hard drive, the equivalent of a several hundred page printed
record. It is then the job of the sleep technician to review these records
in detail in order to evaluate the sleep quality of the patient so that
the physician can ultimately make a diagnosis. The "review process"
can take up to two or three hours for a patient with a disorder.
With FASS, part of the review process is automated such that the total
time for the technician is significantly reduced. This obviously is
of benefit to the sleep disorders center or hospital in their constant
pursuit of cost containment.
FASS uses a rule-based approach to sleep staging, which combines automatically-detected
sleep events (spindles, phasic REM, etc.) with automatically-computed
parameters (FFT frequency analysis, amplitude, etc.), to replicate Rechtschaffen
and Kales sleep staging. FASS provides full staging of wakefulness and
all 5 stages of sleep.
The comprehensive user interface of FASS permits changing some of the
staging parameter thresholds and rules, as well as default settings.
Amplitude and EEG frequency trends, such as Delta and Alpha percentage
trends and Chin EMG amplitude trends, are also computed and can be displayed
on the PSG timeline along with the sleep staging hypnogram.
FASS creates a fully-staged study that can be reviewed, modified, and
exported to a standard report. The study results can be compared to
an expert PSG scorer's staging using TWin's Stage Comparison program.
The Grass Technologies Product Group of Astro-Med designs, manufactures,
and sells advanced systems for EEG and PSG (sleep monitoring), Long-term
Epilepsy monitoring, and OR/ICU neuromonitoring, as well as supplies,
accessories, and a broad range of products for neurophysiological research.
Visit Astro-Med, Inc. at www.grasstechnologies.com for further information.
Safe Harbor Statement
This news release contains forward-looking statements, and actual results
may vary from those expressed or implied herein. Factors that could
affect these results include those mentioned in Astro-Med's FY2004 annual
report and its annual and quarterly filings with the Securities and
Exchange Commission.
Contact: Astro-Med, Inc.
Everett V. Pizzuti, 401-828-4000
SOURCE: Astro-Med,
Inc.
