Practical Implementations of Real-Time Heart Rate Variability

摘要

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a useful, non-invasive indicator of autonomic nervous system responsiveness that can be used to signal the need for life-saving interventions, but to date it has not been possible to use it in real-time (RT). Because HRV reflects homeostasis in thermoregulation and blood pressure control, it provides a non-invasive 'window' into these processes. The overall objectives of the present research program are to identify aspects of HRV that are predictive of adverse consequences in hypo-and hyper- thermia; (2) to implement HRV metrics for quantitation of these aspects; and (3) to develop RT HRV collection software and RT computation of the custom HRV metrics under field-like conditions using modest capability processors. To those overall objectives, the specific aims of the research are to: (1) Acquire temperature and HRV data on human volunteers approaching hypothermia or hyperthermia, to develop custom HRV metrics predictive of adverse outcomes; (2) Develop a software system capable of processing HRV data in RT under field-like conditions and the metrics developed in (1); (3) Validate the software and metrics in PT with a different and larger cohort of volunteers.