Patent ID: 7953484

Claim:
A system for pacing a heart having cardiac chambers including right and left ventricles and cardiac valves including tricuspid, mitral, pulmonary, and aortic valves, the system comprising: a heart sound input to receive one or more signals indicative of heart sounds; a heart sound detector coupled to the heart sound input, the heart sound detector adapted to detect predetermined type heart sounds using the received one or more signals, the predetermined type heart sounds having morphological features indicative of one or more time intervals each between closures of a first cardiac valve and a second cardiac valve in a cardiac cycle, the one or more time intervals each indicative of cardiac mechanical dyssynchrony; a heart sound morphology analyzer coupled to the heart sound detector, the heart sound morphology analyzer adapted to measure one or more dyssynchrony parameters each from one heart sound of the detected predetermined type heart sounds and indicative of a time interval of the one or more time intervals; and a pacing parameter optimization module coupled to the heart sound morphology analyzer, the pacing parameter optimization module adapted to determine one or more approximately optimal pacing parameters using the one or more dyssynchrony parameters, the one or more approximately optimal pacing parameters providing for an approximately minimum degree of cardiac mechanical dyssynchrony as indicated by the one or more dyssynchrony parameters.