Color Spectrographic Phonocardiography for the Detection and Characterization of Pediatric Heart Murmurs: A Case Series

Abstract

Although auscultation of the heart remains central in the detection of abnormal heart sounds and murmurs that are frequently indicative of serious cardiac pathology, the application of electronic methods to this end remains rarely used in daily clinical practice. In this report we provide a series of examples showing how the phonocardiogram can be analyzed quantitatively using color spectrographic techniques and discuss how such methods may be of future value for noninvasive cardiac monitoring. Using a sound recording system, we recorded the heart sounds and data acquisition using the program Gold Wave ( http://www.goldwave.com ) to collect data from a high-speed USB interface. Sample color spectrogram analysis of the obtained signals was performed using custom software written in MATLAB. Data was collected from a number of infants and adults with cardiac structural disease as well as from some normal individuals. Our data is presented as a series of 13 cases. We expect the application of spectrographic techniques to phonocardiography to grow substantially as ongoing research and clinical experience demonstrates its utility in various settings. Our evaluation of a simple, low-cost phonocardiographic recording and analysis system to assist in determining the characteristic features of heart murmurs shows promise in helping distinguish normal heart sounds, innocent systolic murmurs and pathological murmurs in children. It expected to be useful in other clinical settings as well.