Fundamental heart sounds analysis using improved complete ensemble EMD with adaptive noise

Abstract

Phonocardiogram (PCG) recordings contain valuable information about the functioning and state of the heart that is useful in the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. The first heart sound (S1) and the second heart sound (S2), produced by the closing of the atrioventricular valves and the closing of the semilunar valves, respectively, are the fundamental sounds of the heart. The similarity in morphology and duration of these heart sounds and their superposition in the frequency domain makes it difficult to use them in computer systems to provide an automatic diagnosis. Therefore, in this paper, we analyzed these heart sounds in the intrinsic mode functions (IMF) domain, which were issued from two time-frequency decomposition techniques, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and the improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (ICEEMDAN), with the aim of retrieving useful information on an expanded basis. The decomposition of PCG recordings into IMF allows representing the fundamental cardiac sounds in many oscillating components, increasing thus the observability of the system. Moreover, the time-frequency representation of PCG recordings could provide valuable information to automatically detect heart sounds and diagnose pathologies from characteristic patterns of these heart sounds in the IMF. The analysis was made through the variance and Shannon's entropy of the heart sounds, observed in time windows located among different IMF. In addition, we determined the frequencies ranges of the IMF from the decomposition of the PCG recordings using both techniques. Given that the frequency content of S1 and S2 is different but overlap each other, and the duration of these sounds are also different, these heart sounds were represented in different IMF with different variances and entropies, in both techniques, but the ICEEMDAN offers a more consistent decomposition of S1 and S2 (they were concentrated in IMF 4-6). The decomposition of PCG signals into IMF has allowed us to identify the frequency components of the IMF in which these sounds are found.