Patent ID: 9241672
Filing Date: 2016-01-26
CPC Classification: A61B

Claim Text:
1. An acoustic physiological monitoring method, comprising the steps of: detecting by a physiological monitoring system, using a sound transducer, body sounds; generating by the system an acoustic signal expressing the body sounds; filtering by the system a time segment of the signal into a target portion in a target frequency band and at least one non-target portion in at least one non-target frequency band; computing by the system an energy of the target portion; computing by the system an energy of the non-target portion; computing by the system a plurality of usability indicators for the time segment by applying a plurality of different rules based at least in part on the energy of the target portion and the energy of the non-target portion, each of the usability indicators providing a separate indication of whether the time segment is clear or mixed; determining by the system a usability of the time segment including assigning to the time segment a probability greater than zero and less than one that the time segment is usable based at least in part on the usability indicators and one or more probabilities that one or more neighboring time segments is usable; selectively calculating by the system a physiological parameter estimate using the time segment based at least in part on the usability of the time segment; and outputting by the system information based at least in part on the physiological parameter estimate.