ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to characterize time-frequency behavior using the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to analyze ventricular and arterial pressure signals from anesthetized mongrel dogs. Both ventricular and arterial pressure pulsations were recorded using catheter-tip manometers and the CWT was applied to these signals to obtain module coefficients, associated contours, and the 3-D representation of these modules. FFT was applied to obtain the Fourier spectrum. The mathematical analysis of the cardiovascular pressure pulsations permitted the identification of the evolution of the frequency components for the aortic and pulmonary valve functions as well as the intra-ventricular and respiratory influences on the cardiovascular dynamics. The CWT is a very sensitive and reliable procedure for determining the three-dimensional (time-frequency-amplitude) of the oscillatory phenomena during each cardiac cycle, providing more, although complementary, information than the spectral analysis obtained with the FFT. Thanks to the FFT, exact values in Hz could be found for the different events produced in each cycle, and thus the information provided by CWT could be related to the information provided by FFT. The combination of both mathematical methodologies permitted identification of each component of the analyzed signals. The 3D representation allowed an easy comparison of the relative importance of the complex magnitudes in frequency for the different components of the pulsatile waves.