Augmented phonocardiogram acquisition and analysis

Abstract

Heart auscultation (the interpretation of heart sounds by a physician) is a widely used screening method for heart disease. It is well documented, however, that with the exception of expert cardiologists, physicians' auscultation skills are limited. It has also been shown that standard training methods do little to improve these skills. In this paper, we propose an architecture for a phonocardiogram analysis system that can augment a physician's auscultation abilities and serve as a training aid to improve those abilities. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.