System for Cardiac Arrhythmia Detection and Characterization

A system for analyzing cardiac electrophysiological signals, the system comprising:

• an acquisition processor for acquiring signal data representing heart electrical activity over a plurality of heart cycles, an individual heart cycle comprising a signal portion between successive sequential R waves;
• and
• a data processor for processing said signal data by,
• determining and comparing frequency component spectral peaks of corresponding frequency components of said signal data in different individual time intervals of said signal data and
• in response to the comparison showing change in frequency interval between said spectral peaks, generating an alert message.

A system for analyzing cardiac electrophysiological signals, the system comprising:

• an acquisition processor for acquiring signal data representing heart electrical activity over a plurality of heart cycles, an individual heart cycle comprising a signal portion between successive sequential R waves;
• a time interval detector using a signal peak detector for detecting a plurality of successive time intervals including individual time intervals comprising a time interval between a first peak occurring in a first heart cycle and a second peak occurring in at least one of,
• (a) a successive sequential second heart cycle and
• (b) a third heart cycle successive and sequential to said second heart cycle;
• and
• a data processor for processing the plurality of detected successive time intervals by,
• determining and comparing frequency component spectral peaks of corresponding frequency components of said signal data in different individual time intervals of said plurality of detected successive time intervals and
• in response to the comparison showing at least one of, (a) change in amplitude and (b) change in peak frequency, exceeding a predetermined threshold, generating an alert message.

A method for analyzing cardiac electrophysiological signals, comprising the activities of:

• acquiring signal data representing heart electrical activity over a plurality of heart cycles, an individual heart cycle comprising a signal portion between successive sequential R waves;
• using a signal peak detector for detecting a plurality of successive time intervals including individual time intervals comprising a time interval between a first peak occurring in a first heart cycle and a second peak occurring in at least one of,
• (a) a successive sequential second heart cycle and
• (b) a third heart cycle successive and sequential to said second heart cycle;
• and
• processing the plurality of detected successive time intervals by,
• determining at least one interval parameter of, a mean, variance and standard deviation of said time intervals and
• generating an alert message in response to said interval parameter.