HRV - ECG Generator: Software for Testing Heart Rate Variability Detection

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) has been shown to serve as an effective diagnostic and prognostic tool in a variety of clinical applications, including for patients who have suffered from myocardial infarction, sepsis and liver cirrhosis. There currently exist a variety of devices and software to quantify HRV based on RR interval series collected from ECG data. However, as the uses for HRV expand, a greater variety of devices for different applications are being designed and developed. Thus, it is useful to have available a method for efficiently testing preliminary software. The HRV/ECG Generator software is designed to build both an RR interval series and simulated ECG data based on user selected settings. The data is built from one of three common HRV quantifier; LF/HF ratio, SDNN and RMSSD. The user can also select a value for the quantifier from a preset range of values specific to each quantifier. When tested by an established HRV software package, the simulated data was found to accurately reflect the predetermined value used to construct it for tested values within a realistic range for all quantifiers. A suggested value range and acceptable percent error calculation is given for each individual quantifier that allows the user to determine if the program being tested is acceptably accurate in the early development stages.