Insights on Spectral Measures for HRV Based on a Novel Approach for Data Acquisition

In this paper, we present new insights on classical spectral measures for heart rate variability (HRV), based on a novel method for HRV acquisition. A dynamic breathing task, where the test participants are asked to breathe following a metronome with slowly increasing frequency, allows for the acquisition of respiratory-related HRV-data covering the frequency range in which adults breathe in different everyday situations. We discuss how the use of a time-frequency representation, e.g. the spectrogram or the Wigner-Ville distribution, should be preferred to the traditional use of the periodogram, due to the non-stationarity of the data. We argue that this approach can highlight the correlation of spectral measures such as low-frequency and high-frequency HRV with relevant factors as age, gender and Body-Mass-Index, thanks to the improved quality of the spectral measures