The heart sound preprocessor

Technology developed for signal and data processing was applied to diagnostic techniques in the area of phonocardiography (pcg), the graphic recording of the sounds of the heart generated by the functioning of the aortic and ventricular valves. The relatively broad bandwidth of the PCG signal (20 to 2000 Hz) was reduced to less than 100 Hz by the use of a heart sound envelope. The process involves full-wave rectification of the PCG signal, envelope detection of the rectified wave, and low pass filtering of the resultant envelope.