SMOOTHED-PSEUDO WIGNER–VILLE DISTRIBUTION OF NORMAL AND AORTIC STENOSIS HEART SOUNDS

Abstract

In this paper, we are interested in the acquisition and the time-frequency analysis of the Phonocardiogram (PCG) signal. The interactive software "PCG Recorder" we implemented in MATLAB, drives the sound card of a personal computer for acquisition purposes. Normal and abnormal heart sounds were acquired with 16 bits resolution and at high sampling frequencies; the value 2 kHz was selected as sampling rate to avoid spectral aliasing. For each patient, additional information like the age, the gender, the weight as well as the auscultation area can be introduced within the saved data file. The aortic, the tricuspid, the mitral and the pulmonic areas are considered for the acquisition task. The Smoothed-Pseudo Wigner–Ville Distribution (SPWVD) yield adequate Time-Frequency Representations (TFRs) of such non-stationary signal as heart sounds. Moreover, by taking into account the corresponding auscultation area for each obtained TFR, we adopt exclusion reasoning to attribute each burst to its origins within the myocardium. Furthermore, the alternating functioning of heart valves and cavities in systole and diastole was characterized in the time and frequency domains. Aortic stenosis heart sounds were involved in our study in a view to confirm their pathological nature towards the normal heart sounds findings. Indeed, the weakened S1 and S2 heart sounds and the strong systolic ejection murmur which dominates the overall systole, confirm our hypotheses. Thus, modulations laws relating to the systolic ejection of blood through the stenosed orifice were characterized by means of the reliable SPWVD approach. A third heart sound (S3) which is an indicator of the presence of systolic dysfunction and the elevated filling pressure for aortic stenosis lesion was also characterized.