USER'S GUIDE - Biosignal Analysis and Medical Imaging Group

Chapter 1OverviewThe Kubios heart rate variability (HRV) analysis software 1 is developed by the BiosignalAnalysis and Medical Imaging Group at the Department of Physics, University of Kuopio,Kuopio, Finland. The software is a considerable extension to the previous version (version1.1) of the software described in [32]. The software has been programmed using MATLAB R7.0.4 Release 14 Service Pack 2 (The MathWorks, Inc.) and was compiled to a deployablestandalone application with the MATLAB R Compiler 4.2. The MATLAB R ComponentRuntime (MCR) is required for running Kubios HRV Analysis.Kubios HRV analysis is an advanced tool for studying the variability of heart beatintervals. Due to its wide variety of different analysis options and the easy to use interface,the software is suitable for researchers and clinicians with varying premises. The softwareis mainly designed for the analysis of normal human HRV, but should also be usable, e.g.,for animal researchers.The developed software includes all the commonlyusedtime-andfrequency-domainvariables of HRV. The frequency-domain variables being calculated for both nonparametric(Fourier transform based) and parametric (autoregressive modeling based) spectrum estimates.In addition, the software calculates several nonlinear variables such as the Poincaréplot, recurrence plot analysis, detrended fluctuation analysis, approximate and sample entropies,and correlation dimension. Furthermore, the software also includes time-varyinganalysis options. For example, the time-varying changes in all the time- and frequencydomainvariables are supported. The variation of the frequency-domain variables is obtainedthrough time-varying spectrum estimation for which the commonly used spectrogram andthe statistically sophisticated Kalman smoother methods are available.In addition to the usability of the program user interface, attention has also been paid inthe presentation and saving of the analysis results. On the one hand, the software generatestwo report sheets which include all the analysis results in a compact form. These reportsheets can be either printed or exported to various file formats including portable documentformat (PDF). On the other hand, the results can also be saved in an ASCII text file fromwhich they can be imported to a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel R for furtherinspection.1 Kuopio University has only limited rights to the software. These limited rights are governed by a certainlicense agreement between Kuopio University and The MathWorks, Inc.4