Patent ID: RE38712

Claim:
Method of storing signals having a course over time in an implantable medical device and/or transmitting the signals out of the device and out of a patient's body, said method comprising the steps of: sensing physiological signals of a patient's body; detecting a course over time associated with said sensed physiological signals in the device, said course over time being detected at predetermined time intervals with a constant sampling interval; obtaining a quantity of signal samples from the detected course over time; selecting a partial quantity of said obtained signal samples based on predetermining selection criterion wherein the selection criterion is the first derivation of the course over time of the signals according to time and said selecting step includes determining an initial first derivation of the straight-line connection between an nth and the (n−1)th signal sample; and comparing the initial first derivation to an earlier first derivation of the straight-line connection between (n−1)th nth signal sample and the last-stored and/or last-transmitted signal sample; and storing and/or transmitting the nth (n− 1 )th signal sample as the new last signal when the initial first derivation and the earlier first derivation differ by more than a predetermined value.