Patent ID: 7031770

Claim:
An implantable defibrillator or other heart monitoring device designed to distinguish two differing heart rhythms comprising: electrodes that may be attached to the heart of the recipient of the defibrillator or the patient whose heart is being monitored; a first electronic mechanism designed to accept electrical representations of heartbeats from the electrodes, transform these electrical representations into digital data, and perform mathematical computations including at least a partial discrete wavelet transformation upon the digital data, thereby generating at least a subset of discrete wavelet transformation components chosen such that the components generated and retained include components demonstrated to be suitable for use in distinguishing the two differing heart rhythms and also demonstrated to be relatively low in variability from one recipient or patient to another; a template containing at least a corresponding subset of discrete wavelet transformation components captured from at least one individual whose heart was beating in accordance with one of the two differing heart rhythms when the electrical representations of heartbeats that gave rise to these components were captured and computed as described above; a second electronic mechanism for correlating the subset of transformation components provided by the first mechanism against the subset of transformation components provided by the template, giving rise to a correlation value; and a third electronic mechanism for mathematically examining a time series of the correlation values received from the second mechanism and for giving an indication of whether the first or second of the heart rhythms is present, eliminating isolated instances of heartbeat irregularities and focusing upon longer-term trends in the variation of the heart rhythm.