ICEG Morphology Classification using an Analogue VLSI Neural Network

An analogue VLSI neural network has been designed and tested to perform cardiac morphology classification tasks. Analogue techniques werechosen to meet the strict power and area requirements of an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) system. The robustness ofthe neural network architecture reduces the impact of noise, drift and offsets inherent in analogue approaches. The network isa 10:6:3 multi-layer perceptron with on chip digital weight storage, a bucket brigade input to feed the Intracardiac Electrogram (ICEG)to the network and has a winner take all circuit at the output. The network was trained in loop and included a commercial ICD in the signal processing path. The system has successfully distinguishedarrhythmia for different patients with better than 90% true positive and true negative detections for dangerous rhythms which cannot be detected by present ICDs. The chip was implemented in 1.2um CMOS and consumes less than 200nW maximum averagepower in an area of 2.2 x 2.2mm2. 1 INTRODUCTION To the present time, most ICDs have used timing information from ventricular leads only to classify rhythms which has meant some dangerous rhythms can not be distinguished from safe ones, limiting the use of the device.