A system identification approach to baroreflex sensitivity estimation

The body contains a bewildering array of regulatory systems which maintain homeostasis. There is considerable difficulty in isolating a single control loop for analysis, due to the interactions with other systems/loops. One important such regulatory loop is the baroreflex, and baroreflex sensitivity is a characteristic open-loop parameter which can help us to assess the health of the baroreflex. A diverse range of methods have been proposed to determine baroreflex sensitivity from experimental data. Unfortunately, there appears to be little consistency of result among the different methods and some explanation can be found in the nature of the problem: In most cases, an attempt is being made to determine open-loop measures from a system operating in closed-loop, subject to poor excitation. In this paper we propose a strict procedure, based on a rigourous mathematical framework, from which reliable estimates of baroreflex sensitivity can be obtained. A comparison with other methods for baroreflex sensitivity estimation, using the EuroBaVar data set, is performed.