CLASSIFICATION OF NORMAL SINUS

RHYTHM, ATRIAL FIBRILLATION AND

ATRIAL FLUTTER FROM SURFACE
ELECTROCARDIOGRAM USING
CORRELATION DIMENSION
Abdullah Ilyas
MS Mechanical
Reg No. 100777
October 31, 2017

Abstract
Nonlinear methods of measuring heart rate variability derived from
mathematics of fractal geometry have provided an insight into different
heart conditions. These methods serve as a prognostic tool to predict dif-
ferent cardiac conditions based on Electrocardiogram waveform. The non-
linear methods complement the linear measures to classify different heart
conditions and often are proven more helpful in cases where frequent ec-
topy is present in normal sinus rhythm and different types of arythmias.In
this paper correlation dimension using RR interval from ECG waveform
of different patients is estimated to differentiate between a normal sinus
rythm, Atrial Fibrillation and Atrial flutter.

1 Introduction
Heart rate variability (HRV) is a noninvasive indicator of autonomic ner-
vous system activity. Relationship between Low HRV and different patho-
logical conditions have been studied extensively. Low HRV is indicative of
reduced parasympathetic cardiac control, has been associated with disor-
ders ranging from diabetes mellitus to sleep problems, as well as difficulty
regulating emotions. Reduced HRV has been shown to be predictor of
mortality after myocardial infarction. It may therefore serves as a reli-
able prognostic tool to assess the state of health. A representative HRV
discrete-beat series (RR series) is obtained from the electrocardiogram and
is defined as the time between consecutive R peaks. Different geometri-
cal, time domain and frequency domain methods have been incorporated
to analyze the RR time series. Recent studies have shown that fluctua-
tions in time between the beats in a healthy heart are due to an intrinsic

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variability, nonlinear in nature of the autonomic nervous system control,
thus exhibiting a complex behavior. Several complexity measures which
are invariants of the nonlinear dynamical systems are used for the time
series analysis such as Lyapunov exponents, sample entropy, approximate
entropy and fractal dimensions. Correlation dimension belonging to the
later group of fractal dimension statistically measures the geometry of the
attractor in the phase space. This quantity is related to number of inde-
pendent coordinates to sufficiently represent a dynamical system without
loss of any information.

2 Literature Review
Research over the last decade in the area of dynamical systems suggests
that the measurement of a scalar variable would suffice to construct a
pseudo state space which has the same invariants as the real state space
of the system1.Takens(1981) considered a deterministic autonomous sys-
tem and proved the equivalence of the reconstructed state space and the
original state space. Hence the invariants such as fractal dimensions and
lyapunov exponent of the dynamical system can be estimated efficiently
using the scalar signal from the experimental data. Different methods
are used to reconstruct coordinates independent coordinates for the state
space. According to Packard(1980) time derivatives extracted from time
series data of scalar variables can be used to construct a state space. Using
the finite differences it can be seen that additional information is added
as the order of derivatives is increased. Packard(1980) Ruelle(1989) and
Takens(1981) concluded that one does not need derivatives to form a co-
ordinate system that defines the structure of attractors in phase space.
With an appropriately chosen time delay independent coordinates can be
defined as:
The reconstructed vector y is related to the state vector x from the
original state space by a smooth nonlinear relationship
Y=H(x) Where H(x) is a mapping function that maps x to y. The state
space of the chaotic systems have complex structures. Regions in state
space are stretched,contracted,folded and remapped into a compact region
of the original space whose volume shrinks to zero for a dissipative system.
Typically, the Poincare section of the chaotic system is filled up with infi-
nite number of layers less than an integer subspace. To determine the geo-
metric structure of such state space fractal dimensions(Mandelbrot,1983)
are used. The attracting sets having fractal dimensions are called strange
attactors.The fractal dimension of this attractor counts effective number
of degrees of freedom in the dynamical system and thus quantify com-
plexity of the system. Geometrical structure of a strange attractor can be
estimated from the time series data using correlation dimension. Grass-
berger and Procaccia (1983) devised an algorithm to estimate correlation
dimension of the system from the discrete data points[1]. To estimate
the correlation dimension distance between each pair of data points is
calculated using Euclidean measure and then compared to the selected
cutoff length scale ro to find out the Correlation integral. For a very
large set of data points the computational cost increased exponentially.

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James Theiler (1987) used an algorithm which computes the standard
Grassberger-Procaccia correlation dimension of a strange attractor from
a finite sample of N points on the attractor by avoiding the computation
of distances greater than some cutoff length scale ro altogether[2]. This
reduction of computation is achieved by construction of a spatial grid of
boxes in which only distances between those pairs of points are calculated
which are in the same or adjacent box. Different numerical methods to es-
timate the dimension of a chaotic system are reviewed by James Theiler[3]
Physiological chaotic systems such as heart are analyzed using nonlinear
methods. Correlation dimension of attractors through interspike intervals
is estimated by Rolando Castro and Tim Sauer(1997). Computational ev-
idence indicates that the dimension can be determined in principle under
either method, assuming that the embedding dimension of the interspike
interval attractor reconstruction is greater than or equal to the correlation
dimension of the attractor[4]. The dependence of the dimension statistics
on the threshold level and the amount of available data is investigated.
To study different kinds of arrhythmia RR interval time series is used
and prognostic power of traditional and fractal measures of RR interval
are compared in patients with depressed Left ventricular function after
an Acute Myocardial Infarction by Heikki V. Huikuri(2000). Correlation
Dimension of heart rate variability in patients with cardiomyopathy is
estimated by Raul Carvajal (2005)[5]. Correlation dimension of healthy
subjects and DCM patients are estimated with different value of time lags.
It was found that CD value is sensitive to the selection of time lag. This
study of CD values depending on the time delay can be useful to explain
the variation of CD reported in the literature for the HRV.

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References
[1] Grassberger, Procaccia Measuring Strangeness of a Strange Attrcator.
1993.
[2] James Theiler [Efficient algorithm for estimating the correlation di-
mension from a set of discrete points]. 1987.
[3] James Theiler [Estimating the Fractal Dimension of Chaotic Time
Series]. The Lincoln Library Journal,Volume 3,Number 1(1990)
[4] Rolando Castro [Correlation dimension of attractors through inter-
spike intervals]. Physcial review.E,Statistical pysics,plasma,fluids and
related disciplinary topics
[5] Raul Carvajal [Correlation dimension analysis of heart rate variability
in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy ].