In this paper we estimate dynamical characteristics of chaotic attractors from sequences of threshold-crossing interspike intervals, and study how the choice of the threshold level (which sets the equation of a secant plane) influences the results of the numerical computations. Under quite general conditions we show that the largest Lyapunov exponent can be estimated from a series of return times to the secant plane, even in the case when some of the loops of the phase space trajectory fail to cross this plane.