Multifractality in human heartbeat dynamics
Ivanov PC, Amaral LAN, Goldberger AL, Havlin S, Rosenblum MG, Struzik ZR, Stanley HENature 399, 461 - 465 (1999)
Times cited: 790
Abstract
There is evidence that physiological signals under healthy conditions may have a fractal temporal structure(1). Here we investigate the possibility that time series generated by certain physiological control systems may be members of a special class of complex processes, termed multifractal, which require a large number of exponents to characterize their scaling properties(2-6). We report on evidence for multifractality in a biological dynamical system, the healthy human heartbeat, and show that the multifractal character and nonlinear properties of the healthy heart rate are encoded in the Fourier phases. We uncover a loss of multifractality for a life-threatening condition, congestive heart failure.