Patent ID: 7031765

Claim:
A method of detecting atrial arrhythmias, comprising one or more of atrial fibrillation (AF) and atrial flutter (AFL) within a segment of ventricular heartbeats signified by intervals between successive ventricular heartbeats that exhibit discriminatory signatures when plotted as data points in a scatter-plot comprising: defining an AF signature metric for AF representative of the sparse distribution of data points during AF episodes and an AFL signature metric representative of the clustering distribution of data points during AFL episodes; determining each interval between successive ventricular heartbeats; plotting each succeeding interval as a data point in a scatter-plot; developing a discriminatory metric signifying the degree of sparseness or clustering of the data points of the scatter-plot; declaring AF if the discriminatory metric satisfies the AF signature metric representative of the distribution of data points during AF; and declaring AFL if the discriminatory metric satisfies the AFL signature metric representative of the distribution of data points during AFL.