Approximate entropy for short-term heart rate variability analysis : is the threshold value computed by Chon’s Formula Appropriate

Approximate entropy (ApEn) is a measure of signals’ complexity and is widely used in physiological time series analyses, and in particular for the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) analysis. However the choice of the threshold value r, requested for its computation, is controversial. A recent study provided the valuable insight that the most appropriate threshold value is the one that provides the maximum ApEn value. Nonetheless, this method is computationally expensive and not feasible for real time processing in m-health applications. In order to reduce the computational cost, a formula for estimating the threshold value has been proposed by other researchers (Chon et al.).

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