Analysis of HRV for Postural Change of Young Adults Using Signal Processing Methods

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a fundamental physiological marker for assessing the autonomic nervous system’s (ANS) reaction. The response of the ANS is influenced by a variety of physical activities, i.e. body postural change. This paper aims to analyze the effect of physical activities such as postural change on HRV. To study this, a dataset of 56 subjects electrocardiogram (ECG) was self-recorded in two body postures (i) Supine and (ii) Standing. For the acquisition of ECG, the BIOPAC®MP36 system has been used at a 500Hz sampling frequency. Further, HRV signals of each subject from recorded ECG have been extracted and selected linear, and nonlinear techniques have been used to determine the effect of postural shift on it. Further, the spearman rank correlation coefficient has been evaluated between the calculated parameters to determine the correlation between linear and nonlinear parameters. The obtained results indicate that the HRV is at a higher scale in the supine posture, while it is at a lower scale when the posture has been changed from supine to standing. The change that occurred in the response of HRV with the postural change indicates that the sympathetic activation of ANS is increased in the standing body posture.