Comparison of frequency domain measures based on spectral decomposition for spontaneous baroreflex sensitivity assessment after Acute Myocardial Infarction

In silico validation of non-invasive arterial compliance estimation and potential determinants of its variability

Arterial compliance (AC) is an important cardiovascular parameter characterizing mechanical properties of arteries. AC is significantly influenced by arterial wall structure and vasomotion, and it markedly influences cardiac load. A new method, based on a two-element Windkessel model, has been recently proposed for estimating AC as the ratio of the time constant T of the diastolic blood pressure decay and peripheral vascular resistance derived from clinically available stroke volume measurements and selected peripheral blood pressure parameters which are less prone to peripheral distortions. The aim of this study was to validate AC estimation using a virtual population generated by in silico model of the systemic arterial tree. In the second part of study, we analysed causal coupling between AC oscillations and variability of its potential determinants - systolic blood pressure and heart rate in healthy young human subjects. The pool of virtual subjects (n=3818) represented an extensive AC distribution. AC was estimated from the peripheral blood pressure curve and by the standard method from the aortic blood pressure curve. The proposed method slightly overestimated AC set in the model but both ACs were strongly correlated (r=0.94, p<0.001). In real data, we observed that AC dynamics was coupled with basic cardiovascular parameters variability independently of the autonomic nervous system state. In silico analysis suggests that AC can be reliably estimated by noninvasive method. The analysis of short-term AC variability together with its determinants could improve our understanding of factors involved in AC dynamics potentially improving assessment of AC changes associated with atherosclerosis process. Key words Arterial compliance, Cardiovascular model, Arterial blood pressure, Causal analysis, Volume-clamp photoplethysmography.

Comparison of automatic and physiologically-based feature selection methods for classifying physiological stress using heart rate and pulse rate variability indices

Objective.This study evaluates the effectiveness of four machine learning algorithms in classifying physiological stress using heart rate variability (HRV) and pulse rate variability (PRV) time series, comparing an automatic feature selection based on Akaike's criterion to a physiologically-based feature selection approach.Approach.Linear discriminant analysis, support vector machines,K-nearest neighbors and random forest were applied on ten HRV and PRV indices from time, frequency and information domains, selected with the two feature selection approaches. Data were collected from 127 healthy individuals during different stress conditions (rest, postural and mental stress).Main results.Our results highlight that, while specific stress classification is feasible, distinguishing between postural and mental stress remains challenging. The used classifiers exhibited similar performance, with automatic Akaike Information Criterion-based feature selection proving overall better than the physiology-driven approach. Additionally, PRV-based features performed comparably to HRV-based ones, indicating their potential in outpatient monitoring using wearable devices.Significance.The obtained findings help to determine the most relevant HRV/PRV features for stress classification, potentially useful to highlight different physiological mechanisms involved during both challenges accompanied by a shift in the sympathovagal balance. The proposed approach may have implications for advancing stress assessment methodologies in clinical settings and real-world contexts for well-being evaluation.

A method to assess linear self-predictability of physiologic processes in the frequency domain: application to beat-to-beat variability of arterial compliance

The concept of self-predictability plays a key role for the analysis of the self-driven dynamics of physiological processes displaying richness of oscillatory rhythms. While time domain measures of self-predictability, as well as time-varying and local extensions, have already been proposed and largely applied in different contexts, they still lack a clear spectral description, which would be significantly useful for the interpretation of the frequency-specific content of the investigated processes. Herein, we propose a novel approach to characterize the linear self-predictability (LSP) of Gaussian processes in the frequency domain. The LSP spectral functions are related to the peaks of the power spectral density (PSD) of the investigated process, which is represented as the sum of different oscillatory components with specific frequency through the method of spectral decomposition. Remarkably, each of the LSP profiles is linked to a specific oscillation of the process, and it returns frequency-specific measures when integrated along spectral bands of physiological interest, as well as a time domain self-predictability measure with a clear meaning in the field of information theory, corresponding to the well-known information storage, when integrated along the whole frequency axis. The proposed measure is first illustrated in a theoretical simulation, showing that it clearly reflects the degree and frequency-specific location of predictability patterns of the analyzed process in both time and frequency domains. Then, it is applied to beat-to-beat time series of arterial compliance obtained in young healthy subjects. The results evidence that the spectral decomposition strategy applied to both the PSD and the spectral LSP of compliance identifies physiological responses to postural stress of low and high frequency oscillations of the process which cannot be traced in the time domain only, highlighting the importance of computing frequency-specific measures of self-predictability in any oscillatory physiologic process.

Spectral decomposition of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular interactions in patients prone to postural syncope and healthy controls

We present a framework for the linear parametric analysis of pairwise interactions in bivariate time series in the time and frequency domains, which allows the evaluation of total, causal and instantaneous interactions and connects time- and frequency-domain measures. The framework is applied to physiological time series to investigate the cerebrovascular regulation from the variability of mean cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) and mean arterial pressure (MAP), and the cardiovascular regulation from the variability of heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP). We analyze time series acquired at rest and during the early and late phase of head-up tilt in subjects developing orthostatic syncope in response to prolonged postural stress, and in healthy controls. The spectral measures of total, causal and instantaneous coupling between HP and SAP, and between MAP and CBFV, are averaged in the low-frequency band of the spectrum to focus on specific rhythms, and over all frequencies to get time-domain measures. The analysis of cardiovascular interactions indicates that postural stress induces baroreflex involvement, and its prolongation induces baroreflex dysregulation in syncope subjects. The analysis of cerebrovascular interactions indicates that the postural stress enhances the total coupling between MAP and CBFV, and challenges cerebral autoregulation in syncope subjects, while the strong sympathetic activation elicited by prolonged postural stress in healthy controls may determine an increased coupling from CBFV to MAP during late tilt. These results document that the combination of time-domain and spectral measures allows us to obtain an integrated view of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular regulation in healthy and diseased subjects.

Multiscale partial information decomposition of dynamic processes with short and long-range correlations: theory and application to cardiovascular control

OBJECTIVE

In this work, an analytical framework for the multiscale analysis of multivariate Gaussian processes is presented, whereby the computation of Partial Information Decomposition measures is achieved accounting for the simultaneous presence of short-term dynamics and long-range correlations.

APPROACH

We consider physiological time series mapping the activity of the cardiac, vascular and respiratory systems in the field of Network Physiology. In this context, the multiscale representation of transfer entropy within the network of interactions among Systolic arterial pressure (S), respiration (R) and heart period (H), as well as the decomposition into unique, redundant and synergistic contributions, is obtained using a Vector AutoRegressive Fractionally Integrated (VARFI) framework for Gaussian processes. This novel approach allows to quantify the directed information flow accounting for the simultaneous presence of short-term dynamics and long-range correlations among the analyzed processes. Additionally, it provides analytical expressions for the computation of the information measures, by exploiting the theory of state space models. The approach is first illustrated in simulated VARFI processes and then applied to H, S and R time series measured in healthy subjects monitored at rest and during mental and postural stress.

MAIN RESULTS

We demonstrate the ability of the VARFI modeling approach to account for the coexistence of short-term and long-range correlations in the study of multivariate processes. Physiologically, we show that postural stress induces larger redundant and synergistic effects from S and R to H at short time scales, while mental stress induces larger information transfer from S to H at longer time scales, thus evidencing the different nature of the two stressors.

SIGNIFICANCE

The proposed methodology allows to extract useful information about the dependence of the information transfer on the balance between short-term and long-range correlations in coupled dynamical systems, which cannot be observed using standard methods that do not consider long-range correlations.

Measuring the Rate of Information Exchange in Point-Process Data With Application to Cardiovascular Variability

The amount of information exchanged per unit of time between two dynamic processes is an important concept for the analysis of complex systems. Theoretical formulations and data-efficient estimators have been recently introduced for this quantity, known as the mutual information rate (MIR), allowing its continuous-time computation for event-based data sets measured as realizations of coupled point processes. This work presents the implementation of MIR for point process applications in Network Physiology and cardiovascular variability, which typically feature short and noisy experimental time series. We assess the bias of MIR estimated for uncoupled point processes in the frame of surrogate data, and we compensate it by introducing a corrected MIR (cMIR) measure designed to return zero values when the two processes do not exchange information. The method is first tested extensively in synthetic point processes including a physiologically-based model of the heartbeat dynamics and the blood pressure propagation times, where we show the ability of cMIR to compensate the negative bias of MIR and return statistically significant values even for weakly coupled processes. The method is then assessed in real point-process data measured from healthy subjects during different physiological conditions, showing that cMIR between heartbeat and pressure propagation times increases significantly during postural stress, though not during mental stress. These results document that cMIR reflects physiological mechanisms of cardiovascular variability related to the joint neural autonomic modulation of heart rate and arterial compliance.