Patent ID: 7803121

Claim:
A method of monitoring a heart of a living organism comprising the steps of: establishing communication with a sensing tip situated within a chamber of said heart, said sensing tip comprising a pressure sensing device and a volume sensing device, wherein said pressure sensing device comprises a highly resistive strain gauge comprising a pair of resistors configured such that the resistances of said resistors change in opposite directions during operation of said pressure sensing device; obtaining a pressure measurement and a volume measurement in said chamber using said pressure sensing device and said volume sensing device respectively, wherein obtaining said pressure measurement comprises utilizing a signal conditioning scheme to compensate for non-idealities in said pressure sensing device by compensating for an offset caused by the temperature coefficient of resistance of the resistors and the highly resistive nature of said strain gauge using a pair of current sources; communicating said measurements to a transmitting device; and wirelessly transmitting electrical representations of said measurements to a receiving device, said electrical representations being used to monitor said heart.