Title: Heart sounds analysis and murmurs

Authors: S.M. Debbal; A. Meziane Tani

Addresses: Faculty of Technology, Genie Biomedical Laboratory (GBM), University A.B. Belkaid-Tlemcen, BP 119, Tlemcen, Algeria ' Faculty of Technology, Genie Biomedical Laboratory (GBM), University A.B. Belkaid-Tlemcen, BP 119, Tlemcen, Algeria

Abstract: Heart sounds and murmurs can be utilised more efficiently by medical doctors when they are displayed visually, rather than through a conventional stethoscope. Heart sounds and murmurs provide clinician with valuable diagnostic and prognostic information. Although heart sound analysis by auscultation is convenient as a clinical tool, heart sound signals are so complex and non-stationary that they have a great difficulty to analyse in time or frequency domain. The performance of the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) is discussed in this paper. This technique is a suitable technique to analyse such a signal. The work presented in the paper is a new approach. The results can be validated among themselves based on a comparison between the PCG signal 'normal' and the other 'pathological'. The spectro-temporal characteristics of the PCG signal will be used as reference for results of treatment of pathological PCG signals. It was also shown that the coefficients of the CWT give a graphic representation that provides a quantitative analysis simultaneously in time and frequency. It is therefore very helpful in extracting clinically useful information.

Keywords: heart sounds; click; heart murmurs; continuous wavelet transform; CWT; time-frequency analysis; graphic representation; phonocardiograms; PCG signals; visualisation; cardiac signals.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMEI.2016.073653

International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2016 Vol.8 No.1, pp.49 - 62

Received: 16 May 2014
Accepted: 22 Dec 2014
Published online: 15 Dec 2015 *

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