Patent ID: 7949390

Claim:
In an implantable system, a method for time domain monitoring of myocardial electrical stability, comprising: (a) pacing a patient's heart for a period of time using a patterned pacing sequence that repeats every N beats, where N is an integer that is at least 3; (b) obtaining an electrical signal that is representative of a plurality of consecutive beats of the patient's heart while the patient's heart is being paced using the patterned pacing sequence that repeats every N beats; (c) dividing the plurality of consecutive beats into a plurality of sets of N consecutive beats; (d) for each set of N consecutive beats, of the plurality of sets of N consecutive beats, determining one or more pairwise combination of consecutive pairs of beats within the set of N consecutive beats; (e) cumulative averaging or cumulative summing corresponding pairwise combinations determined for the plurality of sets of N consecutive beats to thereby produce a plurality of cumulative values; and (f) monitoring myocardial electrical stability based on the cumulative values; wherein steps (b), (c), (d), (e) and (f) are all performed in the time domain without any transformation into the frequency domain.