USER'S GUIDE - Biosignal Analysis and Medical Imaging Group

1.5. Structure of this guide 15After the overview chapter, from where you will find useful information about the systemrequirements and installation, an introduction to heart rate variability is given in Chapter 2.This chapter starts with a short discussion on the control systems of heart rate after whichthe extraction of heart beat periods is discussed and the derivation of HRV time series isdescribed. The rest of the chapter is focused on the preprocessing of HRV data and gives adetailed description of the smoothness priors based detrending approach.In Chapter 3, the analysis methods included in the software are described. The descriptionsof the methods are divided into time-domain, frequency-domain, nonlinear, andtime-varying categories and a summary of the methods is given at the end of the chapter.For most of the methods, exact formulas for the different variables are given and possibleparameter selections are pointed out.In Chapter 4, the description of the features and usage of the software is given. First,the input data formats supported by the software are described and then the user interfacethrough which the software is operated is described. Then, different options for saving theanalysis results are described and, finally, instructions on how to set up the preference valuesfor the analysis options are given.In Chapter 5, two sample runs of the software are presented. The first sample rundescribes how to analyze the lying and standing periods of the orthostatic test measurement(distributed along this software) separately as stationary segments. The second sample run,on the other hand, describes the time-varying analysis procedure of the same measurement.In Appendix A, some frequently asked questions with answers are given. The questionsare selected based on the feedback obtained from the users of the previous version of thissoftware.Finally, in Appendix B, workarounds for some commonly encountered technical problemsare given.Kubios HRV Analysisversion 2.0 betaBiosignal Analysis and Medical Imaging GroupDepartment of PhysicsUniversity of Kuopio, FINLAND