Psychoacoustic Models for Heart Sounds.

The phonocardiography (PCG) – the art and science of recording and interpreting of heart sounds using latest digital technology has significantly helped us to understand and interpret the complex heart sounds (normal, abnormal sounds including murmurs) and in particular valvular diseases. In general, the classification and interpretation of heart sounds and murmurs is based on a adjective 0-6/6 grade scale and described by using ˵faint″, ˵soft″, ˵loud″, ˵ high pitch″, ˵clear″, ˵thrill″, ˵tremor″, ˵musical″ and others terms. The adjective scales vary among the doctors and difficult to derive a standard model for heart sound quality and correct clinical interpretation. In this work, we propose a novel framework based on psychoacoustic principles and derive psychoacoustic models for the heart sounds and murmurs. We discuss the theoretical foundations, psychoacoustic principles and derive the mathematical models for the psychoacoustic features such as loudness, sharpness, intensity, strength, roughness, tonality etc. for a set of heart sounds and murmurs. The proposed framework helps in deriving heart sound quality and also helps in Identifying heart defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]