A quantitative comparison of different methods to detect cardiorespiratory coordination during night-time sleep

In this study six different methods used to analyze cardiorespiratory coordination have been quantitatively compared with respect to their performance (no. of sequences with cardiorespiratory coordination, no. of heart beats coordinated with respiration). Five of these approaches have been suggested in the recent literature whereas one method originates from older studies.The methods were applied to the simultaneous recordings of an electrocardiogram and a respiratory trace of 20 healthy subjects during night-time sleep from 0:00 to 6:00. The best temporal resolution and the highest number of coordinated heart beats were obtained with the analysis of 'Phase Recurrences'. Apart from the oldest method, all methods showed similar qualitative results although the quantities varied between the different approaches. In contrast, the oldest method detected considerably fewer coordinated heart beats since it only used part of the maximum amount of information available in each recording.The method of 'Phase Recurrences' should be the method of choice for the detection of cardiorespiratory coordination since it offers the best temporal resolution and the highest number of coordinated sequences and heart beats. Excluding the oldest method, the results of the heuristic approaches may also be interpreted in terms of the mathematical models.The time intervals between successive heartbeats (e.g. the RR tachogram or, equivalently, the series of instantaneous heart rates) may be analyzed with different tools to obtain information about e.g. heart rate variability (HRV) [1], regularity of the time series [2-7], or large-scale correlations in the time series [8-10]. Each technique provides different information about the 'time-structure' contained in the series of successive heartbeats. Some of them, like information obtained from HRV, may be linked to the sympathetic and parasympathetic activity of the autonomic nervous system [1,11]. Hence, they offer the possibility to interpret t