Abstract:
A method and apparatus for declaring the presence of ventricular fibrillation from an incoming electrocardiographic signal (12) includes sampling (14, 16) at a first frequency and filtering (18) the same to produce a second frequency lower than the first frequency. This filtered signal is passed to a linear predictor (20) which fits a model signal spectrum to the actual signal spectrum and computes (60 d-e, 62 a-c, 64 a-b) coefficients representative of bandwidth and mean frequency of the signal over a short time interval. Then the coefficient of bandwidth (A2) is compared (68, 69) with a threshold value to determine whether or not it exceeds same, and if so the mean frequency coefficient (A1) is compared (71-76) with a range of values to determine whether it falls within a range corresponding to ventricular fibrillation; if it does, ventricular fibrillation is then declared (70) to be present.