Patent ID: 7527597

Claim:
A method of detecting a change in a vascular condition, comprising: receiving sound information associated with blood flowing through a vascular structure; converting the sound information into data associated with a plurality of cardiac cycles; processing the data associated with the plurality of cardiac cycles to determine a spectral characteristic for each of a plurality of frequencies within a frequency band for a first group of the cardiac cycles associated with a current state of the vascular condition and a second group of the cardiac cycles associated with an earlier state of the vascular condition; and detecting the change in the vascular condition based on a comparison between the acoustic characteristic associated with the current state of the vascular condition and an acoustic characteristic associated with the earlier state of the vascular condition, wherein the comparison comprises calculating a difference between each of the spectral characteristics at each of the frequencies for the first group of the cardiac cycles and the spectral characteristic at the corresponding frequency for the second group of the cardiac cycles.