In a comparison study of three actigraphy monitors, William Hrushesky, MD, and colleagues found that an actigraph instrument manufactured by Ambulatory Monitoring Inc (AMI), Ardsley, NY, had features that establishes its superiority to measure circadian rhythmicity over the other two devices involved in the study. The study was featured as a poster presentation at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.

The researchers were interested in the use of actigraphy because of its potential in producing data useful for the monitoring and management of patients with advanced cancer. In their study, the researchers tested three actigraphs on three subjects for a period of 3 to 4 days. The actigraphs were placed simultaneously on the nondominant arms of the subjects. The results of the study showed that the AMI instrument was the only device of the three studied that had the potential to simultaneously record activity at different modes and therefore produced actograms that were more sensitive for both the activity and rest phase.

“Overall, the AMI instrument has features that enable the oncologists to determine whether cancer patients have distorted circadian function, have disturbed sleep, and are consistently exposed to nocturnal light,” the study concludes. “It also provides concurrent information relevant to the quantification of daily activity in the [proportional integrating measure] PIM mode.”