Artifacts and Troubleshooting

Recordings are made of the physiologic events during sleep to understand the mechanisms of sleep and wakefulness, identify sleep disorders, determine appropriate therapies, and monitor response to treatment. Correct interpretation depends on producing high-quality, artifact-free recordings. The objectives of this article are to illustrate common artifacts in polysomnographic recordings, to show how to differentiate between physiologic and nonphysiologic artifacts, to describe the known causes of artifacts, to learn to identify the source of artifacts, and to explain how to optimize the postrecording signals.