Measuring system regularity using fuzzy similarity-based approximate entropy

Approximate entropy (ApEn), a measure quantifying regularity and complexity, is believed to be an effective analyzing method of diverse settings that include both deterministic chaotic and stochastic processes, particularly operative in the analysis of physiological signals that involve relatively small amount of data. However, the similarity definition of vectors based on Heaviside function, of which the boundary is discontinuous and hard, may cause some problems in the validity and accuracy of ApEn. To overcome these problems, a modified ApEn based on fuzzy similarity (mApEn) was proposed. The performance on the MIX stochastic model, as well as those on the Logistic map and the Hennon map with noise, shows that the fuzzy similarity-based ApEn gets more satisfying results than the standard ApEn when characterizing systems with different regularities.