Patent ID: 8788023

Claim:
A method for use with an implantable medical system comprising an implantable medical device (IMD) adapted to define a plurality of sensing vectors between electrodes implanted in a patient for capturing cardiac signals, and a programmer adapted for communication with the IMD; the method comprising: the IMD capturing cardiac signal data from at least one of the plurality of sensing vectors; the IMD analyzing data related to the captured cardiac signal data for vector selection purposes and either: determining that an identified sensing vector is suitable for cardiac event detection; or determining that one or more further sensing vectors is to be analyzed; wherein the step of the IMD analyzing data related to the captured cardiac signal data for vector selection purposes is performed by: the IMD setting a detection threshold and identifying a set of detected events separated by intervals in the cardiac signal data; the IMD analyzing the set of detected events and intervals and characterizing the detected events as either Noise or QRS, including, for at least a given one of the detected events, observing that two intervals, namely an interval before the given event and an interval before a preceding event occurring just before the given event, are very similar and shorter than a predetermined threshold and in response to the intervals being very similar, performing amplitude analysis to characterize the given event and the preceding event as either Noise or QRS, wherein if amplitude analysis is reached, the result is limited to either: i) characterizing the given event as Noise and the preceding event as QRS; or ii) characterizing the given event as QRS and the preceding event as Noise, further wherein, in the step of analyzing and characterizing, if two intervals are equal, the two intervals are considered very similar.