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Abstract

A defibrillator (8) is disclosed that analyzes a 12-lead ECG signal of a patient (25) to detect internal pacing pulses generated by an internal pacemaker (26). At least one of the twelve leads, e.g., lead II, is passed through a low pass filter (28) followed by an analog-to-digital converter (16). The digitized lead II signal is then applied to a digital bandpass filter to remove low and high frequency noise. Using the digital, bandpass filtered, lead II signal, a short term energy (s) and a long term energy (r) are computed. The short term energy (s) consists mostly internal pacing pulse energy, while the long term energy (r) essentially consists of the energy associated with background noise. If the ratio of the short term energy (s) to the long term energy (r) is greater than a predetermined threshold, or if the pair of energy values falls within a range of values defined as a function of the predetermined threshold and absolute noise, a pacing pulse is detected.

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First Claim