An Application of Chaos Theory for Estimation of Simultaneous Variability of RR-intervals in Heart and Systolic Blood Pressure in Humans

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel method based on chaos theory and CZF formulation to estimate BaroReflex Sensitivity, evaluating the simultaneous variability and coupling strength of RR-intervals and systolic blood pressure in humans.

Contribution

It introduces a new chaos-based methodology for assessing cardiovascular variability and coupling, comparing it with standard spectral analysis techniques.

Findings

The new method effectively estimates BRS and coupling strength.

It provides comparable or improved results over Fourier-based techniques.

The approach is validated on young adult subjects.

Abstract

We introduce a new method to estimate BaroReflex Sensitivity (BRS) . The methodology, based on the CZF formulation, recently published (see Conte et al 2008), enables to evaluate simultaneous variability of RR and SBP and to estimate the coupling strength. The technique is applied to subjects (female and men with age ranging from 21 to 28 years old) and it is compared with the results that may be obtained by using the standard Fourier spectral analysis technique. The comparison is also performed by using the technique of Lomb-Scargle periodogram, based on Fourier analysis.