DIY Heart Rate Variability (HRV): Introduction to HRV Parameters

Notebook Difficulty Level: ★★☆☆☆

Using an analogy with the programming paradigms, electrophysiological signals can be viewed as objects containing lots of information inside. However obtatining knowledge from an object is only possible by accessing its attributes (characteristics).

In signal processing there is an identical logic, so, for extracting knowledge from signals (our objects), we need to identify their intrinsic characteristics (parameters).

The following description explains how to extract some parameters from ECG, commonly used for heart rate variability analysis (HRV).

List of HRV analysis parameters: 
☌ Minimum, Maximum and Average RR Interval; 
☌ Minimum, Maximum and Average Heart Rate (BPM); 
☌ SDNN; 
☌ rmsSD; 
☌ NN20, pNN20; 
☌ NN50, pNN50; 
☌ Power inside ULF, VLF, LF and HF Frequency Bands; 
☌ SD1, SD2, SD1 / SD2;