Patent ID: 8170654

Claim:
A method of classifying cardiac signals according to a cardiac event type, comprising: establishing a plurality of population-based thresholds corresponding to a plurality of cardiac signal morphology metrics for discriminating between a first cardiac event and a second cardiac event; establishing a first threshold criterion for discriminating cardiac events, the first threshold criterion comprising a comparison between a cardiac signal morphology metric and one established population-based threshold of the established plurality of population-based thresholds; sensing a cardiac signal segment in a patient; applying the first threshold criterion to the sensed cardiac signal segment; classifying the cardiac signal segment only in response to the applying the first threshold criterion being satisfied; establishing a patient-specific threshold in response to the sensed cardiac signal segment not being classified after applying the first threshold criterion; computing a metric of the sensed cardiac signal segment and comparing the metric to the established patient-specific threshold; and classifying the sensed signal segment in response to the comparing of the metric to the established patient-specific threshold.