Patent ID: 8452403

Claim:
A system comprising: an implantable medical device, the implantable medical device comprising: a memory circuit; a radiation detector circuit configured to detect a condition correlative to a high-energy radiation level that exceeds a background radiation level; and a controller circuit, communicatively coupled to the memory circuit and the radiation detector circuit, wherein the control circuit is configured to: check memory locations for errors using a first rate of error checking per time period during a normal operation mode; and, in response to the radiation detector circuit indicating a high-energy radiation level, initiate a memory scrubbing mode, wherein the memory scrubbing mode has an increased rate of error checking substantially all memory locations per time period in the memory circuit and correcting detected errors, wherein the error checking and error correcting are performed more frequently when the radiation detector circuit indicates a high-energy radiation level is present than when the radiation detector circuit indicates that a high-energy radiation level is not present.