Is the PPG Signal Chaotic?

PhotoPlethysmoGraphic (PPG) signal is an easily accessible biological signal that gives valuable diagnostic information. The novelty is the study procedure of the dynamic of the PPG signals, in our case of young and healthy individuals, with Deep Neural Network, which allows finding the dynamic behavior at different timescales. On a small timescale, the dynamic behavior of the PPG signal is predominantly quasi-periodic. On a large timescale, a more complex dynamic diversity emerges, but never a chaotic behavior as earlier studies had reported. The procedure that determines the dynamics of the PPG signal consists of contrasting the dynamics of a PPG signal with well-known dynamics—named reference signals in this study—, mostly present in physical systems, such as periodic, quasi-periodic, aperiodic, chaotic or random dynamics. For this purpose, this paper provides two methods of analysis based on Deep Neural Network (DNN) architectures. The former uses a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture model. Upon training with reference signals, the CNN model identifies the dynamics present in the PPG signal at different timescales, assigning, according to a classification process, an occurrence probability to each of them. The latter uses a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based on a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architecture. With each of the signals, whether reference signals or PPG signals, the RNN model infers an evolution function (nonlinear regression model) based on training data, and considers its predictive capability over a relatively short time horizon.