Most sensors these days use a technology called photoplethysmography (PPG) to measure heart rate variability (HRV). For example, phone cameras as used in HRV4Training, or dedicated sensors as present in Oura rings or Garmin watches, all use this technology to capture changes in blood volume during a cardiac cycle, and report HRV.
While we use the term HRV, in this context we should be talking about pulse rate variability (or PRV), as what we are actually measuring are PPG-derived changes in pulse rate, not in heart rate. We should be talking about HRV only if we do measure changes in heart rhythm (as opposed to pulse rate), but to do that, we need a different type of technology: electrocardiography (ECG). This is the technology used by more cumbersome devices with sticky gel electrodes or patches, or simply chest straps. The questions I’d like to address in this blog are the following: is HRV the same as PRV? Can we use wearables and phone cameras to track HRV? What are the differences and similarities between these two methods? Full article, here. Comments are closed.
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