Assessing Methods of Heart Rate Variability

Ki-Jong Park; Heejeong Jeong

doi:10.14253/kjcn.2014.16.2.49

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Park and Jeong: Assessing Methods of Heart Rate Variability

Review

Korean J Community Nutr 2014;16(2):49-54.

Published online: 18 January 2014

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14253/kjcn.2014.16.2.49

Assessing Methods of Heart Rate Variability

Ki-Jong Park, Heejeong Jeong

Department of Neurology, Institute of Health Science, Gyeongsang National University School of Medicine, Jinju, Korea

Address for correspondence; Ki-Jong Park Department of Neurology, Gyeongsang National University Hospital, Gyeongsang National University School of Medicine, 79 Gangnam-ro, Jinju 660-702, Korea Tel: +82-55-750-8077 Fax: +82-55-755-1709 E-mail: pkjong@gnu.ac.kr

Received 2 November 2014 Accepted 12 December 2014

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Heart rate variability is significantly associated with cardiovascular complications in various neurological disorders with cardiac impairment. Measures of spontaneous heart rate variability might be different from provocating tests of heart rate variability such as deep breathing and Valsava maneuver. Methods for analysis are divided into time domain methods and frequency domain methods. There are standard deviation of NN interval, standard deviation of average NN interval, root mean square of the successive differences, NN50, and pNN50 in time domain methods. Frequency domain bands can be divided into very low, low, and high frequency. Each variables are influenced by sympathetic and/or parasympathetic activity. (Korean J Clin Neurophysiol 2014;16:49-54)

Keywords: Heart rate, Autonomic nervous system, Cardiovascular abnormalities

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Figure 1.

NN or RR interval in ECG.

Figure 2.

Tachogram. Time series of RR interval in heart rate.

Figure 3.

RR intervals in ECG. R1, R2 and R3 mean 1^st R, 2^nd R, and 3^rd R, respectively. A, B, and C mean RR interval.

Figure 4.

Spectral power of heart rate in normal person.

Table 1.

Time domain variables of heart rate variability¹

Variable	Description	Units
Statistical measures
SDNN	Standard deviation of all NN intervals	ms
SDANN	Standard deviation of the averages of NN intervals in all 5 min segments of the entire recording	ms
RMSSD	The square root of the mean of the sum of the squares of differences between adjacent NN intervals	ms
SDNN index	Mean of the standard deviations of all NN intervals for all 5 min segments of the entire recording	ms
SDSD	Standard deviation of differences between adjacent NN intervals	ms
NN50 count	Number of pairs of adjacent NN intervals differing by more than 50 ms in the entire recording
pNN50	PNN50 count divided by the total number of all NN intervals	%
Geometric measures

HRV triangular index Total number of all NN intervals divided by the maximum number of all NN intervals in the distribution histogram (height of the histogram) of all NN intervals

Table 2.

Frequency domain measures of HRV¹

Variables	Description	Frequency range	Units
Analysis of short-term recordings (5 min)
Total power	The variance of NN intervals over the temporal segment	Approximately ≤0.4 Hz	ms²
VLF	Power in very low frequency range	≤0.04 Hz	ms²
LF	Power in low frequency range	0.04-0.15 Hz	ms²
LF norm or LFn	LF power in normalized units (LF/(total power-VLF)) × 100
HF	Power in high frequency range	0.15-0.4 Hz	ms²
HF norm or LFn	HF power in normalized units (HF/(total power-VLF)) × 100
LF/HF	Sympathovagal balance
Analysis of entire 24 h
Total power	Variance of all NN intervals	Approximately ≤0.4 Hz
ULF	Power in the ultra low frequency range	≤0.003 Hz	ms²
VLF	Power in the very low frequency range	≤0.04 Hz	ms²
LF	Power in the low frequency range	0.04-0.15 Hz	ms²
HF	Power in the high frequency range	0.15-0.4 Hz	ms²

HRV; heart rate variability, VLF; very low frequency, LF; low frequency, HF; high frequency, ULF; ultra low frequency.

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