Symbolic dynamics of ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation

In this paper, the symbolic dynamics analysis was used to analyze the complexity of normal heartbeat signal (NSR), Ventricular tachycardia (VT) and ventricular fibrillation (VF) signals. By calculating the information entropy value of symbolic sequences, the complexities were quantified. Based on different information entropy values, NSR, VT and VF signals were distinguished with satisfactory results. The study showed that a sudden drop of symbolic sequence’s entropy value indicated that the patients most likely entered the episode of ventricular tachycardia and this was a crucial episode for the clinical treatment of patients. It had important clinical significance for the automatic diagnosis.