Novel hybrid computed axial phono-cardiac tomography system for heart sound sources localization

Abstract

According to recent reports by the world health organization (WHO), heart valve disease is one of the leading causes of death around the world. Due to the complex anatomy of the heart, it is quite challenging task to develop a system for heart sound localization, and therefore, there is a need for an accurate axial heart sound localization and tomography imaging for detecting heart valve disease. The proposed approach of Axial heart sound tomography aims to improve the accuracy and speed of heart-valves disease diagnostics. We have developed a simulation hybrid system of a chest shape microphone array with a CT image at the same chest level for functional heart sound tomography imaging that has been proposed, analyzed and computationally evaluated. In the proposed method, the heart valve sound distribution responses are collected simultaneously from the array of surrounding microphones. To increase the response array resolution, an upsampling, using bicubic interpolation, is performed to provide, mathematically, a higher sound localization resolution in the process of axial heart sound tomographic image reconstruction. The sound localization simulation of two different scenarios are considered, first for aortic and pulmonary valves and second for bicuspid and tricuspid valves. The results show that the proposed approach can reconstruct a heart-valves sound image with a resolution of 15.32 mm and 11.9 mm in x- and y-directions respectively. The proposed simulation hybrid system shows its ability to accurately localize the heart valves with high resolution in both × and y directions. Thus, the proposed method provides a useful analytical and diagnostic tool for heart valves by estimating their sound-based problems.