The invention relates to a method for transforming physiological data from the time domain to the frequency domain. The method includes the steps of: providing a plurality of digital data in the time domain; providing a microcomputer programmed to run a recursive Fourier transform estimation algorithm; calculating, for each newly received digital data in the time domain, an integer index using modulo(N) arithmetic based on a time the each newly received data was received; selecting a frequency vector from a plurality of N frequency vectors using the integer index; and updating the plurality of frequency coefficients according to a recursive equation including the selected frequency vector as an input variable. The invention also relates to an apparatus that performs a recursive Fourier transform estimation algorithm to convert data in the time domain to data in the frequency domain.