A new approach for analysis of heart rate variability and QT variability in long-term ECG recording

Background and purpose: With the emergence of long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings that extend several days beyond the typical 24-48 h, the development of new tools to measure heart rate variability (HRV) and QT variability is needed to utilize the full potential of such extra-long-term ECG recordings.

Methods: In this report, we propose a new nonlinear time-frequency analysis approach, the concentration of frequency and time (ConceFT), to study the HRV QT variability from extra-long-term ECG recordings. This approach is a generalization of Short Time Fourier Transform and Continuous Wavelet Transform approaches.

Results: As proof of concept, we used 14-day ECG recordings to show that the ConceFT provides a sharpened and stabilized spectrogram by taking the phase information of the time series and the multitaper technique into account.

Conclusion: The ConceFT has the potential to provide a sharpened and stabilized spectrogram for the heart rate variability and QT variability in 14-day ECG recordings.