The goal of this research is to design and develop new techniques of signal analysis and morphological analysis applied to intracardiac leads. Over the past two years, six new computationally efficient detection schemes have been designed in the laboratory and feasibility has been established by preliminary studies in short passages. Further work is necessary to test the robustness of the detection schemes in the presence of normal (physiologic) acceleration of heart rate. In addition, morphological operators (a non-linear method of analysis of waveforms) will be applied to address the problem of subtle waveform changes caused by the introduction or removal of pharmaceutic agents. Another new approach, time-frequency analysis, will also be examined to assess its performance versus standard time-domain methods. In all cases, the goal is to increase specificity of detection without loss of sensitivity.
