Patent ID: 8126550

Claim:
A method comprising: during a period of time comprising a plurality of cardiac cycles, acquiring data related to the timing of ventricular events and atrial detections; processing the data as follows to determine if there is a time correlation between ventricular events and atrial detections: for each of the plurality of cardiac cycles, measuring the time between a ventricular event and each atrial detection within the cardiac cycle; based on the measured time, associating each atrial detection with one of a plurality of time windows; for each window, incrementing an atrial-detection count when an atrial detection is associated with it and decrementing the atrial-detection count when a ventricular-event count reaches a predetermined number; and comparing the atrial-detection count of each time window to a threshold and for each that satisfies the threshold, designating it a blanking window; and defining a post-ventricular atrial refractory period comprising an absolute atrial refractory period and a segmented relative atrial refractory period, wherein the segmented relative atrial refractory period includes at least one blanking window.