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Instantaneous frequencytime analysis of physiology signals:
The application of pregnant womens radial artery pulse signals
Zhi-Yuan Su
a,
, Chuan-Chen Wang
b
, Tzuyin Wu
b
, Yeng-Tseng Wang
c
,
Feng-Cheng Tang
d
a
Department of Information Management, Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science, Tainan 717, Taiwan
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106, Taiwan
c
National Center for High-performance Computing, Tainan 742, Taiwan
d
Changhua Christian Hospital, Changhua 500, Taiwan
Received 11 May 2007; received in revised form 8 August 2007
Available online 29 September 2007
Abstract
This study used the HilbertHuang transform, a recently developed, instantaneous frequencytime analysis, to analyze radial
artery pulse signals taken from women in their 36th week of pregnancy and after pregnancy. The acquired instantaneous
frequencytime spectrum (Hilbert spectrum) is further compared with the Morlet wavelet spectrum. Results indicate that the Hilbert
spectrum is especially suitable for analyzing the time series of non-stationary radial artery pulse signals since, in the HilbertHuang
transform, signals are decomposed into different mode functions in accordance with signals local time scale. Therefore, the Hilbert
spectrum contains more detailed information than the Morlet wavelet spectrum. From the Hilbert spectrum, we can see that radial
artery pulse signals taken from women in their 36th week of pregnancy and after pregnancy have different patterns. This approach
could be applied to facilitate non-invasive diagnosis of fetus physiological signals in the future.
c 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: HilbertHuang transform; Intrinsic mode function; Empirical mode decomposition; Wavelet analysis; Radial artery pulse signal
1. Introduction
Most oscillation signals observed in nature and the physical world feature non-stationary and nonlinear
characteristics. The traditional Fourier spectral analysis can only provide global (average) energy frequency
distributions. Validity of such an analysis relies crucially on the assumption that the data are linear and stationary.
Fourier analysis is incapable of extracting local (instantaneous) timefrequency variation information embedded in
data originating from nonlinear systems or representing non-stationary phenomena. The timefrequency analysis
method [1] must aid in non-stationary signal analysis.
The wavelet transform [2] is a famous timefrequency analysis method. The wavelet transform calculates the inner
product of signals and the function (
t b
a
), called the wavelet. Altering scale a and central time location b of the
X(t )
t
d. (1)
The combination of X(t ) and Y(t ) can give a time series denition Z(t ) of complex number:
Z(t ) = X(t ) +iY(t ) = a(t )e
i(t )
(2)
in which a(t ) =
_
X
2
(t ) +Y
2
(t ) is the amplitude of this complex signal, (t ) = tan
1 Y(t )
X(t )
is the signal oscillation
phase, and both are time functions. From the phase angle (t ) in Eq. (2), the instantaneous oscillation frequency X(t )
of time series X(t ) can be dened as:
(t ) =
d(t )
dt
. (3)
However, the instantaneous frequency value obtained by this approach still suffers some disadvantages [3]. First,
Eq. (3) is a single-valued function, which only denes one single frequency value at any moment and is inconsistent
with the general concept that a complicated signal is composed of multiple oscillation frequencies. Second, in many
cases, the instantaneous frequency (t ) obtained from the direct Hilbert transform of the signal has no physical
signicance at all [3].
Huang et al. [3] obtained the following conclusion to nd the physical signicance of instantaneous frequency
as dened by Eq. (3). A time series featuring the physical signicance of instantaneous frequency must satisfy two
conditions: (1) the number of extreme and zero crossings in the whole data set must either be equal or differ at most
by one; and (2) at any point, the mean value of the envelope dened by the local maxima and the envelope dened
by the local minima is zero. Huang et al. [3] proposed the following decomposition procedure to decompose any time
series X(t ) into the combination of a basic mode function that meets the above two requirements:
Z.-Y. Su et al. / Physica A 387 (2008) 485494 487
(1) First connect the local extremes of series X(t ) (including the maximum and minimum values) into two envelopes
in the upper and lower ends by means of a cubic spline, and then calculate the average curve of the two envelopes,
referred to as m
11
.
(2) Calculate the difference between series X(t ) and m
11
, referred to as d
11
.
d
11
= X(t ) m
11
. (4)
In theory, series d
11
should basically approach the above two conditions. Otherwise, repeat step (1) on series d
11
;
in other words, calculate the average curve m
12
of the upper and lower envelopes of series d
11
before calculating
the difference between d
11
and m
12
.
d
12
= d
11
m
12
. (5)
Usually, series d
12
is more symmetric than the previous series d
11
. Repeat the above procedures for k time to
obtain series d
1k
:
d
1k
= d
1k1
m
1k
. (6)
Series d
1k
can be viewed as a mode function and stated with the symbol M
1
if it satises the above two conditions.
As this function is derived from the signal itself, Huang et al. [3] named it the intrinsic mode function of the signal,
so as to distinguish it from the traditional Fourier harmonic mode function. In the decomposition process M
1
may
possibly work out the minimum time scale of the series, i.e., the message carried in the highest frequency.
(3) Decompose M
1
from signal X(t ); that is, calculate the difference between series X(t ) and M
1
, referred to as r
1
:
X(t ) M
1
= r
1
. (7)
As series r
1
still contains middle- or low-frequency information to decompose, the above steps from (1) to (3)
should be repeated several times to lter out mode functions M
2
, M
3
, and so on, which represent signal messages
at various time scales.
r
1
M
2
= r
2
, r
2
M
3
= r
3
, . . . , r
n1
M
n
= r
n
. (8)
This procedure should be repeated until the nal series r
n
no longer carries any oscillation message. The remaining
series is the trend of this non-stationary message X(t ). The sum of all the intrinsic mode functions and the nal trend
is the signal X(t ):
X(t ) =
n
j =1
M
j
+r
n
. (9)
As the mode functions M
1
. . . M
n
basically satisfy the two preconditions that dene an instantaneous frequency,
through the Hilbert transform in Eq. (1), the instantaneous oscillation frequency
j
(t ) and amplitude a
j
(t ) of each
mode function M
j
after transformation can be obtained, and the original signal X(t ) can be stated as:
X(t ) = Re
_
n
j =1
a
j
(t )e
i
_
j
(t )
_
. (10)
In Eq. (10), if amplitude a
j
is stated as the function of time t and frequency
j
, an instantaneous frequencytime
spectrum, or Hilbert spectrum H(, t ) can be obtained. The square of amplitude a
2
j
can be considered as energy, so the
Hilbert spectrum H(, t ) accounts for energy distribution carried in signal X(t ) on each frequency at any moment t.
2.2. Continuous wavelet analysis
Any set of signals f (t ) can be processed by the continuous wavelet transform:
C
a,b
=
_
f (t )
1
_
t b
a
_
dt. (11)
The C
a,b
is called the wavelet coefcient, which can be squared to represent the energy, a function of a and b.
488 Z.-Y. Su et al. / Physica A 387 (2008) 485494
If function
a,b
(t ) is dened as:
a,b
(t ) =
1
_
t b
a
_
(12)
in which
1
a
ensures that the norms of
a,b
(t ) and (t ) are equal, Eq. (12) can be applied to Eq. (11):
C
a,b
=
_
f (t )
a,b
(t )dt. (13)
For any real number a or b,
a,b
(t ) indicates the translation from
a,0
(t ) along the time axis by b time units; in other
words, b stands for the translation of
a,b
(t ) from
a,0
(t ).
a,0
(t ) can be dened as:
a,0
(t ) =
1
_
t
a
_
. (14)
It can be observed from Eq. (14) that a is the dilation of
a,0
(t ). Therefore, a stands for scale, or dilation factor.
Mathematics denes the inner product of any two signals x(t ) and y(t ) with limited energy as:
x(t ), y(t ) =
_