Patent Document ID: 8992435
Application ID: 13821121
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of classifying a recorded, digitized acoustic heart sound signal of a patient, the method being performed by a processor and comprising the steps of: pre-processing the heart sound signal so as to be parsed into respective heart beat cycles by identifying or predicting locations of individual heart beats within the heart sound signal, predicting locations and durations for systole and diastole segments of the heart sound signal, compiling a peak array containing peak locations within the heart sound signal that correspond to possible locations of S1 and S2 heart sound pulses in the heart sound signal, calculating interval sizes between the peak locations in the peak array, selecting and isolating heart beats in the heart sound signal that were detected with the highest level of confidence based on the predicted durations of the systole and diastole segments of the heart sound signal and the peak array, determining if segmentation of the heart sound signal is possible based on the selected and isolated heart beats, dividing inter-peak intervals that make up the heart sound signal into even and odd groups in the order in which they appear if segmentation of the heart sound signal was found to be possible, and calculating the variance and mean for both groups and taking the group with the largest ratio of variance over mean as corresponding to the diastole intervals and the other group as corresponding to the systole intervals; electronically comparing the recorded pre-processed heart sound signal to a plurality of artificial neural networks, each artificial neural network being associated with a specific pathology and being trained with at least features extracted from similarly pre-processed heart sound signals with the specific pathology; determining whether the recorded pre-processed heart sound signal corresponds to the artificial neural network associated with any one or more of the pathologies; and classifying the recorded pre-processed heart sound signal as relating to one or more of the pathologies according to the determination.