Abstract
Introduction
Heart rate variability (HRV) is a widely used noninvasive measure of autonomic cardiac regulation. Kubios Scientific is an established platform for HRV analysis, whereas beat-to-beat blood pressure devices such as Finapres NOVA provided an alternative method of acquiring cardiac interval data. However, difference in signal acquisition, beat detection, and processing may affect HRV outcomes. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the reliability between HRV measures obtained from Finapres NOVA and Kubios Scientific across commonly reported time-and frequency-domain indices.
Methods
Single measure intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and the 95% confidence intervals (CI) were used to assess reliability between Finapres NOVA and Kubios Scientific measurements of Standard Deviation of Normal-to-Normal intervals (SDNN), Root Mean Square of Successive Differences (RMSSD), Low Frequency (LF), and High Frequency (HF) from the Finapres NOVA and Kubios Scientific.
Results
When comparing the Finapres NOVA and Kubios Scientific, SDNN demonstrated poor reliability during both trials (Trial 1: ICC= 0.295, 95% CI -0.111-0.658; Trial 2: ICC= -0.021, 95% CI -0.361-0.404), RMSSD demonstrated good reliability during Trial 1 (ICC= 0.780, 95% CI 0.443-0.920) and moderate reliability during Trial 2 (ICC= 0.746, 95% CI 0.426-0.902), LF demonstrated good to excellent reliability (Trial 1: ICC= 0.844, 95% CI 0.606-0.943; Trail 2: ICC= 0.937, 95% CI 0.833-0.977), and HF demonstrated good reliability during both trials (Trial 1: ICC= 0.875, 95% CI 0.686-0.954; Trial 2: ICC= 0.782, 95% CI 0.490-0.918).
Conclusion
Finapres-derived HRV measures demonstrated good reliability with measures obtained using Kubios Scientific across multiple HRV indices. These findings suggest that Finapres NOVA may provide a reliable approach for HRV assessment. However, the variability in reliability across individual HRV measures suggests that equivalence between methods may be measure-specific.