Summary: | Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in the usage of ballistocardiography (<i>BCG</i>) and seismocardiography (<i>SCG</i>) to record myocardial function both in normal and pathological populations. Kinocardiography (KCG) combines these techniques by measuring 12 degrees-of-freedom of body motion produced by myocardial contraction and blood flow through the cardiac chambers and major vessels. The integral of kinetic energy (<i>iK</i>) obtained from the linear and rotational <i>SCG</i>/<i>BCG</i> signals, and automatically computed over the cardiac cycle, is used as a marker of cardiac mechanical function. The present work systematically evaluated the test–retest (TRT) reliability of KCG <i>iK</i> derived from <i>BCG</i>/<i>SCG</i> signals in the short term (<15 min) and long term (3–6 h) on 60 healthy volunteers. Additionally, we investigated the difference of repeatability with different body positions. First, we found high short-term TRT reliability for KCG metrics derived from <i>SCG</i> and <i>BCG</i> recordings. Exceptions to this finding were limited to metrics computed in left lateral decubitus position where the TRT reliability was moderate-to-high. Second, we found low-to-moderate long-term TRT reliability for KCG metrics as expected and confirmed by blood pressure measurements. In summary, KCG parameters derived from <i>BCG</i>/<i>SCG</i> signals show high repeatability and should be further investigated to confirm their use for cardiac condition longitudinal monitoring.
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