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. 2024 Jan 4:14:1224440.
doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1224440. eCollection 2023.

CVRanalysis: a free software for analyzing cardiac, vascular and respiratory interactions

Vincent Pichot  1 , Christophe Corbier  2 , Florian Chouchou  3 , Jean-Claude Barthélémy  1 , Frédéric Roche  1
Affiliations

CVRanalysis: a free software for analyzing cardiac, vascular and respiratory interactions

Vincent Pichot et al. Front Physiol. .

Abstract

Introduction: Simultaneous beat-to-beat R-R intervals, blood pressure and respiration signals are routinely analyzed for the evaluation of autonomic cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory regulations for research or clinical purposes. The more recognized analyses are i) heart rate variability and cardiac coherence, which provides an evaluation of autonomic nervous system activity and more particularly parasympathetic and sympathetic autonomic arms; ii) blood pressure variability which is mainly linked to sympathetic modulation and myogenic vascular function; iii) baroreflex sensitivity; iv) time-frequency analyses to identify fast modifications of autonomic activity; and more recently, v) time and frequency domain Granger causality analyses were introduced for assessing bidirectional causal links between each considered signal, thus allowing the scrutiny of many physiological regulatory mechanisms. Methods: These analyses are commonly applied in various populations and conditions, including mortality and morbidity predictions, cardiac and respiratory rehabilitation, training and overtraining, diabetes, autonomic status of newborns, anesthesia, or neurophysiological studies. Results: We developed CVRanalysis, a free software to analyze cardiac, vascular and respiratory interactions, with a friendly graphical interface designed to meet laboratory requirements. The main strength of CVRanalysis resides in its wide scope of applications: recordings can arise from beat-to-beat preprocessed data (R-R, systolic, diastolic and mean blood pressure, respiration) or raw data (ECG, continuous blood pressure and respiratory waveforms). It has several tools for beat detection and correction, as well as setting of specific areas or events. In addition to the wide possibility of analyses cited above, the interface is also designed for easy study of large cohorts, including batch mode signal processing to avoid running repetitive operations. Results are displayed as figures or saved in text files that are easily employable in statistical softwares. Conclusion: CVRanalysis is freely available at this website: anslabtools.univ-st-etienne.fr. It has been developed using MATLAB® and works on Windows 64-bit operating systems. The software is a standalone application avoiding to have programming skills and to install MATLAB. The aims of this paper area are to describe the physiological, research and clinical contexts of CVRanalysis, to introduce the methodological approach of the different techniques used, and to show an overview of the software with the aid of screenshots.

Keywords: Granger causality; autonomic nervous system; baroreflex; cardiorespiratory; cardiovascular; heart rate variability.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Main window of CVRanalysis software.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Importation of beat-to-beat data from a file in.txt format.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
ECG, blood pressure, and respiratory signals and the location of the corresponding beat-to-beat RR, SBP, DBP and RE extracted data.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Heart rate and blood pressure variability analysis window.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Cardiac coherence analysis window.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Baroreflex analysis window.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
Time-frequency analysis using wavelet transform.
FIGURE 8
FIGURE 8
Granger time domain analysis window.
FIGURE 9
FIGURE 9
Granger frequency domain analysis window.
FIGURE 10
FIGURE 10
Heart rate and blood pressure variability and baroreflex analyses around user-entered events.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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