Evaluation of Scale-Invariance In Physiological Signals By Means Of Balanced Estimation Of Diffusion Entropy

Abstract

By means of the concept of balanced estimation of diffusion entropy we evaluate reliable scale-invariance embedded in different sleep stages and stride records. Segments corresponding to Wake, light sleep, REM, and deep sleep stages are extracted from long-term EEG signals. For each stage the scaling value distributes in a considerable wide range, which tell us that the scaling behavior is subject- and sleep cycle- dependent. The average of the scaling exponent values for wake segments is almost the same with that for REM segments ($\sim 0.8$). Wake and REM stages have significant high value of average scaling exponent, compared with that for light sleep stages ($\sim 0.7$). For the stride series, the original diffusion entropy (DE) and balanced estimation of diffusion entropy (BEDE) give almost the same results for de-trended series. Evolutions of local scaling invariance show that the physiological states change abruptly, though in the experiments great efforts have been done to keep conditions unchanged. Global behaviors of a single physiological signal may lose rich information on physiological states. Methodologically, BEDE can evaluate with considerable precision scale-invariance in very short time series ($\sim 10^2$), while the original DE method sometimes may underestimate scale-invariance exponents or even fail in detecting scale-invariant behavior. The BEDE method is sensitive to trends in time series. Existence of trend may leads to a unreasonable high value of scaling exponent, and consequent mistake conclusions.