Patent ID: 8062219

Claim:
An apparatus to determine one or more migraine triggers associated with migraines, comprising: at least one processor; at least one memory configured to store information associated with a set of temporal onsets that is associated with headaches experienced by at least one individual, and information associated with a pattern of occurrence of a variable associated with at least the one individual; and at least one program module, the program module stored in the memory and configurable to be executed by the processor, the program module including: instructions for selecting a subset of temporal onsets in the set of temporal onsets based on one or more characteristics of different types of headaches, wherein the different types of headaches include migraine and recurrence migraine, wherein the subset of temporal onsets includes one or more onsets corresponding to one or more migraines in the headaches experienced by at least the one individual, wherein the set of temporal onsets includes the subset of temporal onsets and one or more temporal onsets corresponding to one or more additional headaches in the headaches experienced by at least the one individual, wherein the one or more additional headaches include one or more recurrence migraines, wherein the one or more characteristics of recurrence migraine include that a given recurrence migraine corresponds to a given temporal onset in a given group of two or more temporal onsets in the set of temporal onsets that is within a predetermined time interval after an initial temporal onset in the given group of two or more temporal onsets, and wherein the group of two or more temporal onsets can be associated with a single migraine attack; instructions for determining a statistical relationship between the subset of temporal onsets and the pattern of occurrence of the variable in an underdetermined problem in which there are more variables than temporal onsets in the set of temporal onsets, wherein a severity of the underdetermined problem is increased by excluding the one or more temporal onsets corresponding to one or more additional headaches; and instructions for identifying the variable as a migraine trigger in accordance with the statistical relationship.