Influence of Ectopic Beats on Heart Rate Variability Analysis

The analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) plays a dominant role in the study of physiological signal variability. HRV reflects the information of the adjustment of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves on the cardiovascular system and, thus, is widely used to evaluate the functional status of the cardiovascular system. Ectopic beats may affect the analysis of HRV. However, the quantitative relationship between the burden of ectopic beats and HRV indices, including entropy measures, has not yet been investigated in depth. In this work, we analyzed the effects of different numbers of ectopic beats on several widely accepted HRV parameters in time-domain (SDNN), frequency-domain (LF/HF), as well as non-linear features (SampEn and Pt-SampEn (physical threshold-based SampEn)). The results showed that all four indices were influenced by ectopic beats, and the degree of influence was roughly increased with the increase of the number of ectopic beats. Ectopic beats had the greatest impact on the frequency domain index LF/HF, whereas the Pt-SampEn was minimally accepted by ectopic beats. These results also indicated that, compared with the other three indices, Pt-SampEn had better robustness for ectopic beats.