Patent ID: 7123962

Claim:
A system for applying pacing pulses to a heart, the system comprising: a sensing circuit to sense a cardiac signal; a therapy circuit to deliver the pacing pulses; an acoustic sensor to produce an acoustic sensor signal indicative of heart sounds; a controller coupled to the therapy circuit, the controller including: a therapy protocol synthesizer adapted to generate a sequence of pacing parameters; and an automatic therapy protocol execution module adapted to time pacing pulse deliveries each associated with one parameter of the sequence of pacing parameters; and a processor coupled to the sensing circuit, the acoustic sensor, and the controller, the processor including an image formation module adapted to produce a phonocardiographic image based on the cardiac signal and the acoustic sensor signal, the phonocardiographic image including a stack of segments of the acoustic sensor signal aligned by a selected type of the cardiac events and grouped by at least parameters of the sequence of pacing parameters.