Differential entropy based data compression for waveforms

• US 7,904,168 B2
• Filed: 03/26/2007
• Issued: 03/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/26/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Medtronic Incorporated (Medtronic Plc)
• Original Assignee: Medtronic Incorporated (Medtronic Plc)
• Inventors: Corndorf, Eric D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Manuel; George
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wieland; Robert N
• Application Number:
  US11/691,056
• Publication Number:
  US 20080243205A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,443 Days
• Field of Search: 607/30, 607/59, 607/60, 600/509, 600/300, 600/521, 600/523, 600/561, 703/19, 710/52
• US Class Current: 607/60
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/025 Digital circuitry features of electrotherapy devices, e.g. memory, clocks, processors
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/3702 Physiological parameters A61N1/365 takes precedence; evoked response A61N1/371
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/3706 Pacemaker parameters stimulation threshold A61N1/371
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/37252 Details of algorithms or data aspects of communication system, e.g. handshaking, transmitting specific data or segmenting data
• CPC Class Codes: A61N 1/37254 Pacemaker or defibrillator security, e.g. to prevent or inhibit programming alterations by hackers or unauthorised individuals
• CPC Class Codes: H03M 7/40 Conversion to or from variable length codes, e.g. Shannon-Fano code, Huffman code, Morse code

Abstract

Waveforms are digitally sampled and compressed for storage in memory. The compression of the data includes generating a truncated entropy encoding map and using the values within the map to obtain good compression. An encoder further sub-selects values to be encoded and values to remain unencoded to provide an overall compression of the data.

Claims

1. An implantable medical device (IMD) comprising:

a physiological sensor providing an analog output;

a sense amplifier operatively coupled to the sensor and providing an analog waveform indicative of the sensor output;

a memory;

an analog to digital converter (ADC) configured to receive the analog waveform and sample the waveform into digitized data;

a predictive encoding module operatively coupled with the ADC to generate an encoded waveform data point for each of an equivalent data point from a subset of the digitized data;

an entropy encoding module operatively coupled with the predictive encoding module and configured to replace an encoded waveform data point with a codeword for that data point responsive to a predetermined condition being met, wherein the codeword is stored into the memory responsive to when the predetermined condition being met and the encoded waveform data point is stored into the memory responsive to when the predetermined condition not being met; and

a transceiver operatively coupled to the memory and configured to transmit the stored encoded waveform data points and codewords.

2. The IMD of claim 1, wherein the predictive encoding module is a linear predictive encoder.

3. The IMD of claim 2, wherein the linear predictive encoder calculates a difference between a predicted value and a measured value and stores the difference as the encoded waveform data point.

4. The IMD of claim 3, wherein the expected value for a given data point is the measured value of an immediately preceding data point.

5. The IMD of claim 1, wherein the subset does not include an initial digitized data point of a series and the initial digitized data point is stored in memory as an unencoded value.

6. The IMD of claim 5, wherein digitized data points are selected at a predetermined interval and stored in an unencoded form.

7. The IMD of claim 1, further comprising a truncated entropy probability tree data set stored in memory and including the codewords for selected encoded waveform data point values.

8. The IMD of claim 7, wherein the data set further includes an exit code codeword so that the entropy encoding module stores the exit code codeword and the encoded digital value responsive to the predetermined condition being met and the encoded digital value does not have a codeword stored within the entropy probability data set.

9. The IMD of claim 8, wherein the entropy probability data set consists of codewords for the exit code codeword, a value of zero, and twice as many values as a bit resolution value.

10. The IMD of claim 1, further comprising a rule processor configured to determine whether the predetermined condition has been met for a given data point by evaluating the encoded value of an immediately prior encoded data point.

11. The IMD of claim 10, wherein the predetermined condition is whether the immediately prior encoded data point should have been encoded.

12. The IMD of claim 11, wherein a given data point should have been encoded if its value is within an optimized waveform band.

13. The IMD of claim 12, wherein the optimized waveform band includes all values within a truncated entropy probability data set.

14. A system comprising:

an implantable medical device (IMD), comprising;

a physiological sensor providing an analog output;

a sense amplifier operatively coupled to the sensor and providing an analog waveform indicative of the sensor output;

an IMD memory;

an analog to digital converter (ADC) configured to receive the analog waveform and sample the waveform into digitized data;

a predictive encoding module operatively coupled with the ADC to generate an encoded waveform data point for each of an equivalent data point from a subset of the digitized data;

an entropy encoding module operatively coupled with the predictive encoding module and configured to replace an encoded waveform data point with a codeword for that data point responsive to a predetermined condition being met, wherein the codeword is stored into the memory responsive to when the predetermined condition being met and the encoded waveform data point is stored into the memory responsive to the predetermined condition not being met;

a transceiver configured to transmit data from the memory; and

an external device, comprising;

a receiver to receive data transmitted from by the transceiver;

a device memory; and

a decoder configured to evaluate received data and convert any codeword into an encoded value and convert encoded values into the digitized data.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the predictive encoding module calculates a difference between a predicted value and a measured value and stores the difference as the encoded waveform data point and the decoder adds the difference to the predicted value to decode the data.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the expected value for a given data point is the measured value of an immediately preceding data point.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the subset does not include an initial digitized data point of a series and the initial digitized data point is stored in memory as an unencoded value and the decoder decodes subsequent data points based upon the initial digitized data point.

18. The system of claim 14, further comprising a truncated entropy probability tree data set stored in the IMD memory and in the device memory and including the codewords for selected encoded waveform data point values.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the data set further includes an exit code codeword so that the entropy encoding module stores the exit code codeword and the encoded digital value responsive to a predetermined condition being met and the encoded digital value does not have a codeword stored within the entropy probability data set and the decoder recognizes the exit code codeword and process the data immediately following the exit code codeword as the encoded data point.

20. The system of claim 14, further comprising a first rule processor operating within the IMD and a second rule processor operating within the decoder, wherein each rule processor is configured to determine whether the predetermined condition has been met for a given data point by evaluating the encoded value of an immediately prior encoded data point.