Scale-independent measures and pathologic cardiac dynamics.
We study several scale-independent measures of cardiac interbeat interval dynamics defined through the application of the wavelet transform. We test their performance in detecting heart disease using a database consisting of records of interbeat intervals for a group of healthy individuals and subjects with congestive heart failure. We find that scale-independent measures effectively distinguish healthy from pathologic behavior and propose a new two-variable scale-independent measure that could be clinically useful. We compare the performance of a recently proposed scale-dependent measure and find that the results depend on the database analyzed and on the analyzing wavelet.
Nunes Amaral
L A
LA
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139, USA.
Goldberger
A L
AL
Ivanov PCh
Stanley
H E
HE
D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006321:Heart / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted