Parametric Time-domain Measures of Long-term Heart Rate Variability Signal

Based on alpha-stable distributional modelling, we have proposed a set of parametric measures to analyze long-term heart rate variability(HRV). The set, in difference from standard measures, accommodates premature beats in the HRV analysis. It preserves the structure of standard measures, redefines many of them and includes new measures. The rationale of the method was demonstrated by simulations. We found that the standard measures SDANN and SDNNIndex were strongly correlated to their parametric counterparts SDARR and SRRIndex, DRRIndex in a group of normal subjects (correlation coefficients 0.979, 0.939, 0.999) and less so in a group of patients (0.942, 0.544, 0.463). Statistical tests indicated that the new parametric measures could better differentiate better between the two groups. Keywords— Heart rate variability, alpha-stable distribution, premature beats.