Section: Contracts and Grants with Industry

ANR project DMASC: Scaling Invariance of Cardiac Signals, Dynamical Systems and Multifractal Analysis

Participants : Julien Barral, Patrick Loiseau, Claire Médigue, Michel Sorine.

Collaboration with Denis Chemla (Kremlin-Bicêtre Hospital), Paulo Gonçalves (INRIA Rhônes-Alpes) and Stéphane Seuret (Paris 12 University).

The ANR project DMASC (Program SYSCOMM 2008) started in January 2009 under the coordination of J. Barral.

Numerical studies using ideas from statistical physics, large deviations theory and functions analysis have exhibited striking scaling invariance properties for human long-term R-R interval signals extracted from ECG (intervals between two consecutive heartbeats). These numerical studies reveal that the scaling invariance may have different forms depending upon the states of the patients in particular for certain cardiac diseases. These observations suggest that a good understanding of multifractal properties of cardiac signals might lead to new pertinent tools for diagnosis and surveillance. However, until now, neither satisfactory physiological interpretations of these properties nor mathematical models have been proposed for these signals. For medical applications we need to go beyond the previously mentioned works and achieve a deepened study of the scaling invariance structure of cardiac signals. This is the aim of DMASC.

New robust algorithms for the multifractal signals processing are required ; specifically, it seems relevant to complete the usual statistical approach with a geometric study of the scaling invariance. In addition, it is necessary to apply these tools to a number of data arising from distinct pathologies, in order to start a classification of the different features of the observed scaling invariance, and to relate them to physiology. This should contribute to develop a new flexible multifractal mathematical model whose parameters could be adjusted according to the observed pathology. This multifractal analysis can be applied to another fundamental signal, the arterial blood pressure, as well as to the couple (R-R, Blood Pressure). An article has been submitted [54] .