A Recurrence Quantification Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicine Pulse and Its Application in Assessment of Coronary Artery Disease

Purpose: This study was conducted to illustrate that pulse diagnosis of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was useful in the assessment of coronary artery lesions in patients with Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). Methods: By using phase-space reconstruction, one-dimensional pulse signals of participants were extended to higher-dimensional phase space, and recurrence plot (RP) and recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) were performed to extract nonlinear dynamic characteristics of pulse signals recorded from the radial artery of participants. Nonparametric test was used to investigate differences of RQA features of the pulse signals between the normal group, the group of single-vessel coronary artery disease and the group of multivessel coronary artery disease. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was applied to determine the diagnosis value of the RQA features of pulse signals in identifying multivessel coronary artery disease. Results: Among the RQA features of pulse signals, recurrence rate (RR) and trapping time (TT) of the two groups with CHD were significantly greater than those of the normal group(<0.05); RR identified multivessel coronary artery lesions wih an area under ROC curve(AUC) of.891, a maximum Youden's index of.667, a sensitivity of 89.6%, and a specificity of 80.2%; TT identified multivessel coronary coronary artery lesions with an AUC of .812, a maximum Youden's index of 0.573, and a sensitivity of 76% and a specificity of 81.3%. Conclusion: RQA features of TCM pulse signals can be used to assess the potential risk of cardiovascular accidents in patients with CHD.