Wireless laptop-based phonocardiograph and diagnosis

Auscultation is used to evaluate heart health, and can indicate when it's needed to refer a patient to a cardiologist. Advanced phonocardiograph (PCG) signal processing algorithms are developed to assist the physician in the initial diagnosis but they are primarily designed and demonstrated with research quality equipment. Therefore, there is a need to demonstrate the applicability of those techniques with consumer grade instrument. Furthermore, routine monitoring would benefit from a wireless PCG sensor that allows continuous monitoring of cardiac signals of patients in physical activity, e.g., treadmill or weight exercise. In this work, a low-cost portable and wireless healthcare monitoring system based on PCG signal is implemented to validate and evaluate the most advanced algorithms. Off-the-shelf electronics and a notebook PC are used with MATLAB codes to record and analyze PCG signals which are collected with a notebook computer in tethered and wireless mode. Physiological parameters based on the S1 and S2 signals and MATLAB codes are demonstrated. While the prototype is based on MATLAB, the later is not an absolute requirement.