Analysis of heartbeat asymmetry based on multi-scale time irreversibility test

We investigate the asymmetry of heart rate control system and suggest a simple index to quantify this asymmetry by performing high-dimensional time irreversibility tests to heartbeat interval time series over multiple scales. The results provide strong evidence to the concept that the asymmetry is an intrinsic property of heart rate control system. As a simple and visual method, it is proved to be effective in classifying physiologic and synthetic subjects while the maximum scale is selected within a proper range, and also provides a new way to analyze the time irreversibility for other high-dimensional systems.