Comparison between K-nearest-neighbor approaches for conditional entropy estimation: application to the assessment of the cardiac control in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients

The study evaluates the k-nearest-neighbor (KNN) strategy for the assessment of complexity of the cardiac neural control from spontaneous fluctuations of heart period (HP). Two different procedures were assessed: i) the KNN estimation of the conditional entropy (CE) proposed by Porta et al; ii) the KNN estimation of mutual information proposed by Kozachenko-Leonenko, refined by Kraskov-Stögbauer-Grassberger and here adapted for the CE estimation. The two procedures were compared over HP variability recordings obtained at rest in supine position and during head-up tilt (HUT) in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients and healthy subjects. We found that the indexes derived from the two procedures were significantly correlated and both methods were able to detect the effect of HUT on HP complexity within the same group and distinguish the two populations within the same experimental condition. We recommend the use of the KNN strategy to quantify the dynamical complexity of cardiac neural control in addition to more traditional approaches.