Studying heart rate variability from ballistocardiography acquired by force platform: Comparison with conventional ECG

Abstract

Ballistocardiography (BCG), measuring the heart beat-induced mass movements of the body generated by forces associated to heart contraction, has been recently reconsidered as a useful non-invasive technique to characterize cardiac performance, potentially offering a simple, efficient and affordable solution for e-health monitoring. Our aim was to extract heart rate variability indices from BCG signal (B-HRV), and to evaluate their correlation with ECG-derived (E-HRV) ones, both in time and frequency domains.