CARDIOVASCULAR VARIABILITY SIGNALS : TOWARDS A BETTER QUANTIFICATION
OF THE COMPLEXITY OF PHYSIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
Biomedical signals carry important information about the behavior of the living systems under studying. A proper processing of these signals allows to obtain useful physiological and clinical information. Many advanced algorithms of signal processing have been introduced for the studying of cardiovascular system and important selective information is obtainable even in presence of strong sources of noise or low signal/noise ratio. Traditional stationary signal analysis together with innovative methods of investigation of dynamical properties of biological systems and signals in second-order or in higher-order approaches (i.e., in time-frequency, time-variant and time-scale analysis, as well as in non linear dynamics analysis) provide a wide variety of even complex processing tools for information enhancement procedures. An important innovative aspect is constituted by the integration between signal processing and modeling which is capable to directly attribute patho-physiological meaning to the parameters obtained from the processing and viceversa the modeling fitting could certainly be improved by taking into account the results from signal processing procedure. Such an integration process could comprehend also parameters and observations detected at different scales (starting from genomic sequences up to organ or system disturbance), at different organs and with different modalities. In cardiovascular system, such an approach could improve the information towards a deeper knowledge of the complex mechanisms of regulation elicited by the autonomic nervous system and, hence, a more powerful tool for a finer and personalized diagnosis.

CV: Sergio Cerutti. Professor in Biomedical Signal and Data Processing at the Department of Bioengineering of the Polytechnic University in Milano, Italy. In the period 2000-2006 he has been the Chairman of the same Department. His research interests are mainly in the following topics: biomedical signal processing (ECG, blood pressure signal and respiration, cardiovascular variability signals, EEG and evoked potentials), neurosciences and cardiovascular modelling. In his research activity he has put emphasis on the integration of information at different modalities, at different sources and at different scales in various physiological systems. Since 1983 he has taught a course at a graduate and a doc level on Biomedical Signal Processing and Modelling at Engineering Faculties (Milano and Roma) as well as at Specialisation Schools of Medical Faculties (Milano and Roma). He has been Elected Member of IEEE-EMBS AdCom (Region 8) in the period 1993-1996. He is actually Fellow Member of IEEE and of EAMBES and Associate Editor of IEEE Trans BME. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE-EMBS Summer School on Biomedical Signal Processing: he was the local organiser of four Summer Schools held in Siena. He has been Visiting Professor at Harvard-MIT Division Health Science and Technology, Boston, USA for an overall period of 1 year. Actually he is Visiting Professor for a few months at IST - Department of Physics, Lisbon, Portugal. He is the Author of more than 400 international scientific contributions (more than 180 on indexed scientific journals).