Patent attributes
A patient monitoring signal processing system adaptively varies medical signal data rate. The system uses an analog to digital converter for digitizing an analog cyclically varying input signal derived from a patient in response to a sampling clock input. The sampling clock determines frequency of analog to digital sampling of the analog input signal by the analog to digital converter. A detector detects first and second different signal portions within a cycle of the cyclically varying input signal. A control processor coupled to the analog to digital converter and the detector, provides the sampling clock and adaptively determines first and second different frequencies of the sampling clock to be used in sampling within detected corresponding first and second different signal portions of the cyclically varying input signal in response to predetermined information indicating a frequency of a signal component of the cyclically varying input signal in the first signal portion is higher than a frequency of a signal component of the cyclically varying input signal in the second signal portion. Also the first frequency is higher than the second frequency of the first and second different frequencies.