Use of recurrence plots in the analysis of heart beat intervals

Recurrence plots, which were defined to appreciate the dynamics of a time series, were applied to the heart rates of subjects with a history of congestive heart failure and heart transplantation as they were administered normal saline. It is shown that constructing a recurrence plot is an efficient means of recovering dynamical information about heart beats. This method does not require as much data as traditional methods, and is computationally quick. Qualitative information about local divergence rates and relative dimensionality of the original signal are visually obvious. This information emphasizes that adiabatic systems may be usefully analyzed without requiring the reconstruction of an entire attractor