Apparatus for beat buffering techniques varified by arrhythmias detection for stopaction frames of cardiac function

Claim 1

Apparatus for the processing of cardiac data of the type produced by a radiation detecting camera, the cardiac data being produced in association with ongoing heart sound signals including first and second heart sound signals and an ECG signal, the apparatus comprising: temporary storage means serving as a buffer memory, said temporary storage means having a cardiac data input for receiving all of the cardiac data and a plurality of control inputs for selectively gating in cardiac data; first means for developing trigger signals from the ECG signals to establish a plurality of framing intervals within each cardiac cycle; second means for developing trigger signals from the second heart sound signal for establishing a mid-point in each cardiac cycle; means for developing gating signals, responsive to said first and second means, serving to define frame intervals for the cardiac data while progressing through cardiac cycles; means for assigning addresses to each frame for a control input to the temporary storage means responsive to the trigger signals; framing means for combining selected output frames, connected to the temporary storage means, and responsive to the gating signals to provide cardiac output frames in blocks of improved resolution corresponding to predetermined intervals within the cardiac cycle; rate evaluating means, connected to receive the ECG signal for providing an average cycle time for the heart rate, said rate evaluation means updating itself by computing each new cycle time using the currently received ECG signal, and said rate evaluating means producing an output when the new cycle time falls outside of a predetermined range associated with an updated average cycle time of a predetermined number of cardiac cycles; the temporary storage means including another control input for discarding stored cardiac data, and the rate evaluating means produces an output for the other control input to discard cardiac data associated with an arrhythmia condition the temporary storage means then selectively containing only cardiac data indicative of all normal cardiac activity in the received cardiac data applied to the cardiac data input; the temporary storage means providing output frames of cardiac data in accordance with the addresses; and apparatus for diagnostic analysis receiving the output frames including a permanent memory to provide a diagnostic output.