A Review on Recent Patents in Digital Processing for Cardiac Electric Signals (I): From Basic Systems to Arrhythmia Analysis

Cardiac electric signals are currently the most informative source about the heart rhythm and its disorders, and hence, the use of adequate digital signal processing techniques is necessary to yield reliable diagnostic parameters, either to the clinician or to automatic monitoring systems. A number of systems have been patented during the last years, which are grouped in this review according to their application scope. In this first part, techniques for electrocardiogram and intracardiac electrogram filtering, and for feature extraction, are first examined, then patents on arrhythmia analysis are then summarized. The wide number of basic systems for cardiac signal processing analysis that have been disclosed indicates that this field represents a main scenario in the near and middle future of cardiac health.