The transition network for RR -increments is pre- sented in a directed and weighted graph, with vertices represent- ing RR -increments and edges corresponding to the order in a sequence of increments. The adjacency matrix and the transition matrix of this network provide a graphical tool which could be useful in the assessment of cardiac regulation. As an example, the method is applied in detecting differences between diurnal activity...

Experiments were performed in a group of 19 healthy, non-smoking volunteers. The experiment consisted of three apnoeas, sequentially: 30 s apnoea, 60 s apnoea and maximal, that could be done, apnoea. The breath-hold was separated for 5 minutes rest. The following parameters were measured and obtained for further analysis: blood parameters, artery diameter of the internal carotid artery, end-tidal CO2 in expired air, the cardiac...

We argue that network methods are successful in detecting nonlinear properties in the dynamics of autonomic nocturnal regulation in short-term variability. Two modes of visualization of networks constructed from RR-increments are proposed. The first is based on the handling of a state space. The state space of RR-increments can be modified by a bin size used to code a signal and by the role of a given vertex as the representation...

Two entropy-based approaches are investigated to study patterns describing differences in time intervals between consecutive heartbeats. The first method explores matrices arising from networks of transitions constructed following events represented by a time series. The second method considers distributions of ordinal patterns of length three, whereby patterns with repeated values are counted as different patterns. Both methods provide...