Method and apparatus for diagnosing vulnerability to lethal cardiac arrhythmias
First Claim
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1. A method of analyzing heart beats to obtain an indication of heart conditions favorable to heart failure comprising the steps of:
- (a) measuring a series of N heart beats;
(b) measuring in the N series the relative beat-to-beat timing and providing a series of such measurements; and
(c) analyzing the beat-to-beat timing for chaos in the timing wherein the chaos is represented by an instantaneous value of dimension of the beat timing in a multidimensional representation of the chaos having values up to m dimensions where a healthy heart is represented by a higher dimensional value m and a lower value of m indicates a less healthy heart.
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Abstract
A method and apparatus for diagnosing the vulnerability of a patient'"'"'s heart to lethal cardiac arrhythmias uses on-line comparison of the beat timing vectors with the stored vectors of a number of previous beats and analyzing the vector differences according to a chaos techniques to obtain an indication of heart condition.
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Citations
11 Claims
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1. A method of analyzing heart beats to obtain an indication of heart conditions favorable to heart failure comprising the steps of:
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(a) measuring a series of N heart beats; (b) measuring in the N series the relative beat-to-beat timing and providing a series of such measurements; and (c) analyzing the beat-to-beat timing for chaos in the timing wherein the chaos is represented by an instantaneous value of dimension of the beat timing in a multidimensional representation of the chaos having values up to m dimensions where a healthy heart is represented by a higher dimensional value m and a lower value of m indicates a less healthy heart. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
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8. A method of testing heart conditions contributing to failure comprising the steps of:
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(a) forming a series of timing measurements on successive heartbeats wherein the timing is for a series of N length in a serially arranged memory for the timing measurements; (b) inputting the next occurring beat timing measurement and discarding the oldest beat timing measurement from the N series in memory; (c) as each of a series of next occurring beat timing measurements is made, performing a new beat timing chaos analysis and providing an output in the form of a single value which indicates the measure of chaos; (d) as subsequent beat timing measurements occur, obtaining additional timing chaos analysis values indicative of the measure of chaos; and (e) forming an output record of values indicative of the measure of chaos as an indication of patient heart condition. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10)
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11. A method for analyzing heart beat timing signals for the presence or absence of conditions indicative of impending heart malfunction comprising the steps of:
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(a) converting a series of heart beat signals into serial time measurements; (b) with the last occurring time measurement, performing a timing chaos analysis of the series of measurements to obtain a measurement of chaos; (c) repeating the timing chaos analysis of the series of measurements to obtain a measurement of chaos with the next occurring time measurement; (d) wherein the steps of determining a measurement of chaos represents chaos by determining an arithmatic value therefrom; and (e) detecting in the chaos arithmatic value a value indicative of impending heart malfunction.
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Specification