Detecting Stochastic Information of Electrocardiograms

Abstract

In this work we present a method to detect, identify and characterize stochastic information contained in an electrocardiogram (ECG). We assume, as it is well known, that the ECG has information corresponding to many different processes related to the cardiac activity. We analyze scaling and Markov processes properties of the detected stochastic information using the power spectrum of the ECG and the Fokker-Planck equation respectively. The detected stochastic information is then characterized by three measures. First, the slope of the power spectrum in a particular range of frequencies as a scaling parameter. Second, an empirical estimation of the drift and diffusion coefficients of the Fokker-Planck equation through the Kramers-Moyal coefficients which define the evolution of the probability distribution of the detected stochastic information.