EasieRR: An open-source software for non-invasive heart rate variability assessment
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Key finding:
The assessment of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) based on electrocardiograms (ECG) is considered a good proxy for stress in a wide range of animal species. However, problems can occur e.g., when measuring ECG in ambulatory settings such as recording of unrestrained animals using non-invasive devices. Artefacts caused by technical or physiological sources are common and can disturb the ECG signal. As HRV analysis is highly sensitive to artefacts, the process of visual inspection of the raw signal to detect and correct these is essential. Most of the commercially available software requires intensive training and extensive manual work to accomplish this task and/or is often not available to access for free. EasieRR is an open-source, stand-alone software optimized for analysing ECG in non-restrained animals. The program allows a species-specific analysis and calculation of recommended standard HRV parameters in both, the time- and the nonlinear domain (RMSSD, SDNN, SD1 and SD2). Visualization of data using Poincaré plots and tachograms of RR-intervals eases the validation of correct heart cycle interval detection and minimizes manual work for the user. Automatically detected peaks can be manually corrected via deletion, correction of spurious detections or marking of undetected peaks.
Links to Open Access Publications or DOI:
Citation:
Jeppe Have Rasmussen, Katrina Rosenberger, Jan Langbein
EasieRR: An open-source software for noninvasive heart rate variability assessment.
Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2020;
Vol. 00: pp. 1–10.
