Comparative study of Heart Rate Variability for Capacitive Electrocardiography and Reference Electrocardiography

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a clinical term for the fluctuation in heartbeat intervals influenced by the sympathetic and parasympathetic activity of the autonomic nervous system. The aim of this study is to investigate the significant difference between the Capacitive Electrocardiogram (cECG) and reference ECG (rECG) signals of the same subjects by comparing the corresponding HRV parameters extracted from the ECG signal, which is available in the UnoViS_clin2009 dataset containing 92 patients. The statistical tests are used for the evaluation of the results of both clinical signals. Nonparametric statistical analysis using the Wilcoxon rank sum test, was performed for both conditions to compare significant differences (p-value <0.05) between the two signals according to the variable’s distribution. The purpose of this test is to determine whether the median of the two sets is different or not. The p-value for the features derived for the two groups of data is provided by this test. A low p-value (p<0.05) is desirable statistically. All significant difference was tested by this method since the HRV of cECG and rECG were compared with each other. None of the frequency domain parameters (LF Power, HF Power, or LF/HF Ratio) showed a statistically significant difference. However, in time domain and non-linear (SD1 and SD2) analysis, significant difference (p<0.05) was found.