Annotation File Processing

ann2rr -a annotator -r record [ options ... ]
rr2ann -a annotator -r record [ options ... ]
rdann -a annotator -r record [ -f from -t to -p type ... ]
wrann -a annotator -r record
sumann -a annotator -r record
tach -a annotator -r record [ options ... ]

Programs ‘ann2rr’ and ‘rr2ann’ respectively list RR (inter-beat) intervals in text format from an annotation file, and create an annotation file from a text-format list of RR intervals.

The program ‘rdann’ is an annotation printer similar to the one shown in chapter 6 (see section Example 3: An Annotation Printer). The optional from and to arguments (in standard time format) specify a portion of the annotation file to be printed, and one or more type arguments (annotation mnemonics) can be given to restrict the output to annotations that are of the specified type(s).

The output of ‘rdann’ can be converted back into an annotation file by providing it as the standard input of ‘wrann’. This can be useful for editing annotation files in some cases; they can be converted to ASCII format by ‘rdann’, edited using any text editor, and converted back into annotation files by ‘wrann’.

A summary of the contents of an annotation file can be obtained using ‘sumann’. The summary includes the number of annotations of each type, and the duration and number of episodes of each rhythm and signal quality.

‘tach’ generates a uniformly sampled, smoothed, instantaneous heart rate sequence from an annotation file.