Assessment of Left Ventricular Diastolic Function Using Phonocardiogram Signals: A Comparison with Echocardiography

This paper presents a fully-automated end-to-end phonocardiogram(PCG)-based wearable system capable of providing echocardiography-like metrics for left ventricular (LV) diastolic function assessment. Proxy metrics for five echocardiographic parameters were calculated based on physiologically-motivated features extracted from PCG signals using noise-subtraction, heartbeat-segmentation, and quality-assurance algorithms. The clinical value of these proxy metrics was evaluated using the latest American Society of Echocardiography/European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging guidelines for evaluation of LV diastolic function. When tested on a group of n=34 patients, proxy metrics successfully identified LV diastolic dysfunction in a n=29 subset with 87.5% accuracy, and elevated LV filling pressures in a n=17 subset with 75% accuracy.