Discontinuous doppler signals simulating respiratory misregistration: effect on autoregressive frequency spectra

In this study, we have produced discontinuous Doppler signals of carotid artery and internal jugular vein, simulating respiratory misregistration. The aim of the study is to observe the effect of signal discontinuity and its duration on power spectral density vs. frequency graphs obtained by Autoregressive Modeling. The signals were recorded from ten male volunteers. Signal interruption was performed by moving the sampling volume in and out of the vessel bidirectionally. To estimate the effect of on-line recording time and signal discontinuity on frequency spectra, we have worked on a control data of 30s with continuous signal, and three sets of data with artificially interrupted signals of 30, 60 and 90s duration. Maximum power spectral density, area under the power spectral density, and frequency level corresponding to maximum power spectral density were calculated on frequency spectra. The frequency level corresponding to maximum power spectral density provides the most statistically stable finding in our preliminary data. The signal duration of the signal had no significant effect on the statistical stability of the frequency level.