Patent ID: 8024030

Claim:
A system for analyzing an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal, comprising: an interface that receives an ECG waveform associated with a series of heart beat cycles of a patient, said ECG waveform comprising a P-wave, a QRS complex, a T-wave and an ST segment associated with heart electrical activity of the patient for each heart beat cycle; and a signal processor that processes digitized data samples representing the ECG waveform to evaluate an ST segment deviation by: determining a first and a second isoelectric portion of the ECG waveform, the first isoelectric portion lying temporally between a T-wave of a first heart beat cycle and a P-wave of a successive heart beat cycle, the second isoelectric portion lying temporally between a P-wave of the first heart beat cycle and a QRS complex of the first heart beat cycle, determining a stability measure for each of said first and second isoelectric portions and adaptively selecting the first isoelectric portion or the second isoelectric portion as a baseline for the first heart beat cycle based on a comparison of the stability measures of said first and second isoelectric portions, and determining a point of reference on an ST segment on the ECG waveform associated with the first heart beat cycle and evaluating a deviation of the determined point of reference on the ST segment from the selected baseline.