title: Ratios sequences of close R-R intervals in cardiac arrhythmias.
abstract: In this paper we introduce a new method for the quantification of the variations occurring in the original R-R interval sequence measured on the ECG in the presence of arrhythmia. The method is based on the construction of derived sequences. These are generated by calculating the ratio between each value in the original sequence and some of the preceding ones. The method's properties can be partly brought back to those of certain non-recursive digital filters, which illustrate their capability to detect any events occurring in the original sequence at frequencies equal to 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 of the basic frequency. Experiments run on data from real patients from the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia Database and on data generated by mathematical models show the selection capability to be sufficiently retained by a set of histograms plotted with data from the original and derived sequences.
mesh_terms: D001145:Arrhythmias, Cardiac / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001699:Biometry; D003201:Computers; D004562:Electrocardiography; D004594:Electrophysiology; D006801:Humans; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular