by JULIEN IE HOFFMAN One of the earliest coronary physiologists was Scaramucci who, in 1695, postu lated that during systole the contracting myocardium inhibited coronary blood flow. Since then, the many contributions that have been made to our knowledge of the coronary circulation can be arbitrarily divided into three phases based on advances in technical methods. The early phase of research into the coronary circulation, done with great difficulty with crude methods, may be regarded as ending in the 1940s, and it included major discoveries made by such well known investigators as Georg von...

This book provides a comprehensive review of progress in the acquisition and extraction of electrocardiogram signals. The coverage is extensive, from a review of filtering techniques to measurement of heart rate variability, to aortic pressure measurement, to strategies for assessing contractile effort of the left ventricle and more. The book concludes by assessing the future of cardiac signal processing, leading to next generation research which directly impact cardiac health care.