A patient monitoring system may be configured to use template matching in determining physiological parameters. A physiological signal may be monitored, and a wavelet transform may be performed. The wavelet transform, or parameters derived thereof such as energy distribution or relative phase difference, may be compared with one or more templates using template matching. Templates may be based on, for example, physiological data, mathematical models, or look-up tables, and may be pre-computed and stored. Physiological parameters may be determined based on the template matching results. Scale variability, confidence metrics, or both, may be used to aid in determining the physiological parameter.