Resampling Strategies and their Influence on Heart Rate Variability Features in Low Sampling Rate Electrocardiogram Data

Abstract

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a parameter to measure fluctuations in the interval between heartbeats. HRV provides essential insights into the cardiovascular function and autonomic nervous system. Electrocardiograms (ECG) on wearable devices are often recorded at low sampling rates, limiting temporal resolution and information. Resampling is a technique of changing the sampling rate from a high sampling rate to a lower sampling rate and vice versa. This research aims to evaluate the effect of resampling ECG data with a low sampling rate on HRV features. ECG data consists of 50 Hz and 100 Hz sampling rates. Data with a 50 Hz sampling rate is up-sampled up to 100 Hz, while 100 Hz data is down-sampled up to 50 Hz and up-sampled up to 250 Hz using the Fast Fourier Transform Interpolation Method. Upsampling from 50 Hz to 100 Hz shows unsatisfactory results, except for some HRV features such as NN20, pNN20, and CVI. Better results were found when up sampling from 100 Hz up to 250 Hz, with some HRV features showing good concordance values. However, downsampling from 100 Hz up to 50 Hz is unsuitable for HRV feature analysis. To obtain accurate HRV analysis results in all domains, it is highly recommended to use a sampling rate above 100 Hz.