| Popis: |
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death in the United States. In many cases, CVDs go unnoticed or are diagnosed late, contributing to the high death rate of such diseases. To address this issue, new methods for the early diagnosis of CVDs should be developed. In many medical conditions, heart rate can play an important role as an early indicator of heart diseases. In this pilot study, a heart rate monitoring method based on cardiovascular-induced sounds is investigated. For this purpose, phonocardiography (PCG) signals are measured noninvasively on the body surface of five healthy subjects (21–24 years) using an electronic stethoscope. In addition, electrocardiography (ECG) was used as a gold-standard method of cardiac monitoring. The PCG signals were then post-processed using custom-built algorithms to estimate the subject heart rate. These estimated heart rates were then compared with the heart rate calculated from the ECG signal using the well-known Pan-Tompkins algorithm. Results showed that the heart rate estimations from the acoustic modalities were consistent with those calculated from the gold-standard ECG. |
