Informative Nature and Nonlinearity of Lagged Poincaré Plots Indices in Analysis of Heart Rate Variability

Abstract

Lagged Poincaré plots have been successful in characterizing abnormal cardiac function. However, the current research practices do not favour any specific lag of Poincaré plots, thus complicating the comparison of results of different researchers in their analysis of heart rate of healthy subjects and patients. We researched the informative nature of lagged Poincaré plots in different states of the autonomic nervous system. It was tested in three models: different age groups, groups with different balance of autonomous regulation, and in hypertensive patients. Correlation analysis shows that for lag l = 6, SD1/SD2 has weak (r = 0.33) correlation with linear parameters of heart rate variability (HRV). For l more than 6 it displays even less correlation with linear parameters, but the changes in SD1/SD2 become statistically insignificant. Secondly, surrogate data tests show that the real SD1/SD2 is statistically different from its surrogate value and the conclusion could be made that the heart rhythm has nonlinear properties. Thirdly, the three models showed that for different functional states of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), SD1/SD2 ratio varied only for lags l = 5 and 6. All of this allow to us to give cautious recommendation to use SD1/SD2 with lags 5 and 6 as a nonlinear characteristic of HRV. The received data could be used as the basis for continuing the research in standardisation of nonlinear analytic methods.