Approximate Entropy (ApEn) based Heart Rate Variability Analysis

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has been established as a vital index for diagnostics and prognosis of a number of pathological conditions. Moreover, HRV is a proven indicator of autonomic balance. As HRV is a result of multiple responses acting at various time scales, these interactions need to be quantified. In this paper, a complexity measure called ApEn is utilized to quantify the complexity of HRV. This method is tested on age stratified standard Fantasia database from Physionet. It is observed that young subjects show higher HRV complexity than the older ones. The effect of tolerance threshold ‘r’ is also evaluated on the HRV complexity estimation of young and old subjects. Further, for r≥0.10, the complexity of HRV is higher for young subjects but the trend is reverse for r<0.10. Therefore, it is concluded that the tolerance threshold ‘r’ should be carefully selected for the complexity analysis of HRV.