ECG artifacts and heart period variability: Don't miss a beat!
Abstract
The impact of artifacts on estimates of heart period variability were evaluated by modeling the effects of missed R‐waves and spurious R‐wave detections in actual and simulated heart period series. Results revealed that even a single artifact, occurring within a 128‐s interbeat interval series, can impart substantial spurious variance into all commonly analyzed frequency bands, including that associated with respiratory sinus arrhythmia. In fact, the spurious variance introduced by a single artifact may be greater than that associated with true basal heart period variability and can far exceed typical effect sizes in psychophysiological studies. The effects of artifacts are not related to a specific analytical method and are apparent in both frequency and time domain analyses. Results emphasize the importance of artifact detection and resolution for studies of heart period variability.
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Only one heartbeat makes a difference in the analysis.
“This is eloquently explained by Berntson and Stowell (1998) who stated that only one heartbeat makes a difference in the analysis.”
From Heart Rate Variability and Cardiac Vagal Tone in Psychophysiological Research – Recommendations for Experiment Planning, Data Analysis, and Data Reporting (2017) · cites this paper as Berntson and Stowell (1998)
Artifact correction is a very important step in the pre-processing of the HRV signal.
“As we will detail later artifact correction is very important step in the pre-processing of the signal (Berntson and Stowell, 1998; Shaffer and Combatalade, 2013).”
From Heart Rate Variability and Cardiac Vagal Tone in Psychophysiological Research – Recommendations for Experiment Planning, Data Analysis, and Data Reporting (2017) · cites this paper as Berntson and Stowell, 1998
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“As we will detail later artifact correction is very important step in the pre-processing of the signal (Berntson and Stowell, 1998; Shaffer and Combatalade, 2013).”
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“…to be reliable in most conditions (Gillinov et al., 2017; Plews et al., 2017), it does not allow for precise artifact correction via visual inspection of the ECG signal to understand whether artifacts are due to technical or physiological issues (Berntson and Stowell, 1998; Laborde et al., 2017).”
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- Authors
- Berntson, G. G., & Stowell, J. R.
- Affiliations
- The Ohio State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Berntson, Gary G.
- Venue
- Psychophysiology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1998-01
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 127-132
- ISSN
- 0048-5772 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-8986
- OpenAlex
- W1969980989
- Cited by
- 223
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 0.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychophysiology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (HL52321)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › ECG Monitoring and Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Non-Invasive Vital Sign Monitoring
- Keywords
- ECG artifacts, heart rate variability, R-wave detection, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, artifact detection, frequency domain analysis, time-domain analysis
- MeSH terms
- Computer Simulation, Data Interpretation, Statistical, Electrocardiography, Heart Rate, Humans
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