Development and validation of an integrated portable heart rate variability (HRV) analysis system - STREME.

In this paper, we introduce an integrated, portable, affordable and simple to use heart rate variability (HRV) analysis tool STREME. The system consists of an ECG acquisition device and software for HRV analysis. We assessed the reliability and validity of using STREME against the reference standards RMS VarioWin and Kubios HRV for the short term HRV analysis. The validation study was carried out with the participation of 46 healthy subjects that included 15 men and 31 women with an average age of 27.67 ± 7.75yrs. The results showed that there is a significantly strong correlation (r > 0.95, p < 0.001) between STREME and reference systems in HRV indices. The Bland-Altman analysis of all features computed from STREME and reference system represent a close agreement for all the parameters. Hence STREME HRV analysis tool can be recommended to researchers and other professionals for the evaluation of autonomic function using short term HRV.