Multi-modal cardiac diagnostic decision support system and method

Watrous, R. L.; Reichek, N.

A method for extracting features from cardiac acoustic signals includes the steps of obtaining a cardiac acoustic signal, and extracting physiologically significant features from the cardiac acoustic signal using a neural network. A method for evaluating cardiac acoustic signals includes the steps of obtaining a cardiac acoustic signal, analyzing the cardiac acoustic signal with a wavelet decomposition to extract time-frequency information, and identifying basic heart sounds using neural networks applied to the extracted time-frequency information. A method for determining cardiac event sequences from cardiac acoustic signals includes the steps of obtaining a cardiac acoustic signal, and processing a sequence of features extracted from the cardiac acoustic signal by a probabilistic finite-state automaton to determine a most probable sequence of cardiac events given the cardiac acoustic signal. A method for extracting findings from cardiac acoustic signals includes the steps of obtaining a cardiac acoustic signal, processing the cardiac acoustic signal to determine a most probable sequence of cardiac events given the cardiac acoustic signal, and extracting the clinical findings from the sequence of cardiac events. A method for determining a status of heart murmurs includes the steps of obtaining a cardiac acoustic signal, detecting a murmur, if any, from the cardiac acoustic signal, and determining whether the murmur is one of functional and pathological based upon expert rules.