Patent ID: 7565194

Claim:
A method of automatically determining which type of treatment is most appropriate for a cardiac arrest victim, the method comprising: transforming one or more time domain ECG signals into a frequency domain generally containing a plurality of peaks; processing the frequency domain representation to characterize at least a plurality of the peaks, wherein the plurality of parameters constitute less than the full frequency domain representation of the peak, wherein characterizing a peak comprises determining a plurality of parameters characterizing the peak; determining a reference frequency from the frequency domain; determining a variance of the energy of the frequency domain using the reference frequency; determining that the victim is in a sinus arrhythmic state if the variance of the energy of the frequency representation is below a threshold, and determining the type of treatment based on the parameters characterizing at least some of the peaks, wherein determining the type of treatment comprises determining that the type of treatment is to defibrillate the victim's heart if the following conditions are met: the victim is determined to be in the sinus arrhythmic state; a frequency of a largest amplitude frequency peak is less than a first threshold; and the number of peaks is less than a second threshold.