Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 222, 525-534 (2013)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-01857-4

Regular Article

Ordinal pattern statistics for the assessment of heart rate variability

¹ Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland
² Hypertension Unit, Department of Hypertension and Diabetology, Medical University of Gdańsk, Poland
³ Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, Gdańsk University, Poland
⁴ Centro de Investigación Operativa, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Spain
⁵ Institute of Physics, University of Zielona Góra, Poland
⁶ Department of Cardiology-Intensive Therapy, University of Medical Sciences in Poznań, Poland

^a e-mail: graff@mif.pg.gda.pl

Received: 27 March 2013
Revised: 25 April 2013
Published online: 25 June 2013

Abstract

The recognition of all main features of a healthy heart rhythm (the so-called sinus rhythm) is still one of the biggest challenges in contemporary cardiology. Recently the interesting physiological phenomenon of heart rate asymmetry has been observed. This phenomenon is related to unbalanced contributions of heart rate decelerations and accelerations to heart rate variability. In this paper we apply methods based on the concept of ordinal pattern to the analysis of electrocardiograms (inter-peak intervals) of healthy subjects in the supine position. This way we observe new regularities of the heart rhythm related to the distribution of ordinal patterns of lengths 3 and 4.