Influence of Psychological Stress on QT Interval

Abstract

This paper investigates the influence of psychological stress due to driving in city traffic condition on beat-to-beat QT interval. Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal of 16 subjects were analyzed from Physionet "drivedb" database. Total 32 segments of ECG signal was selected from all subjects. 16 of which were recorded during "Stressed" condition and rest 16 were in "Unstressed" states. Each segment was 5 minutes long and QT intervals were extracted using Berger's template matching algorithm. Heart rate corrected QT (QTc) intervals was calculated using methods proposed by Bazett, Fridericia and Framingham. The mean and standard deviation of each QTc interval time series was calculated as a featu..