Mathematical heart sound model construction criteria

Abstract

The article analyzes the capacities of phonocardiography, a diagnostic method based on the registration and analysis of heart sounds. The authors recognize a considerable contribution made by subjective assessments reasoned by the individual peculiarities of physicians’ hearing and the existence of a method objectification problem. The article substantiates the need for developing a method to synthesize the fragments of physiological and pathological phonocardiograms (PCGs) as a source of reference signals used for comparison purposes when making diagnoses in clinical and educational settings. The authors made an attempt to objectively assess reference PCGs from the 3M Library and their own findings obtained in the course of a medical and biological experiment. They demonstrated the high individuality of systolic sounds and the high repeatability of diastolic sounds even within the limits of one and the same phonocardiogram and obtained high-resolution spectral, amplitude-and-frequency and time-and-frequency characteristics. No fundamental differences between the signals obtained via a measurement condenser microphone and piezoceramic contact sensors were revealed.