Diagnosis of congestive heart failure patients using Poincare measures derived from ECG signals

In this study, it is investigated whether Poincare map measures can be used in discriminating the patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) from normal subjects and determining the type of CHF as diastolic and systolic. Poincare map measures are calculated from ECG data that is freely available over the Internet for CHF patients and normal subjects and statistically compared using Student-t test. Similar measures are also calculated from ECG data obtained from clinics for discriminating diastolic and systolic CHF patients and statistically compared. As a result, Poincare map measures of SD1, SD2, and SD1/SD2 are found to be statistically significant to discriminate patients with CHF from normals whereas only the SD1/SD2 measure is found to be statistically significant for discriminating diastolic CHF patients from systolic ones.