Assistive Technology for Heart Monitoring of Elderly People through Speech Analysis

Assistive Technology for Heart Monitoring of Elderly People through Speech Analysis

Kavita Thakur, Anjali Deshpande, Arun Shrihari Zadgaonkar
Copyright: © 2016 |Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-9530-6.ch013
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Abstract

Most of the elderly population suffer from some sort of heart disorders, so, continuous monitoring of heart functioning is required to diagnose diseases proactively. Electrocardiogram (ECG) is a tool widely used for identification of various heart diseases, but, it requires patients to visit clinic for checkup by experts. As formant frequencies of speech reflect physiological features of the human body, a correlation exists between ECG cycle and Acoustical Cardiogram (ACG) cycle obtained from formant frequency analysis of speech signal. Various heart parameters like RR-cycle duration, heart beat rate, systole cycle etc. can be determined from acoustical RR-cycle. This chapter introduces a novel non-invasive technique for monitoring of human heart functioning through speech analysis by which patients can monitor their heart functioning themselves. Such kind of assistive technology can be useful for elderly population for monitoring of various physical organs of human body as well through their speech signal analysis.
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Heart Physiology

Heart is a hollow, muscular organ having 300 grams mass with four chambers, found in chest between lungs surrounded by membrane called pericardium. Pericardial space is fluid-filled to nourish and protect the heart. The heart is a complex muscular pump that maintains blood pressure and flow through the lungs and the rest of the body. The heart pumps about 100,000 times and moves approx 7200 liters (1900 gallons) of blood every day. The heart has four chambers-two atria act as collecting reservoirs and two ventricles act as pumps. The heart has four valves for- pumping action and maintaining unidirectional blood flow (Cromwell, Weibell, & Pfeiffer, 1977; Friedberg, 1966).

In human beings, the function of the right side of the heart is to collect de-oxygenated blood, in right atrium from the body (via superior and inferior vena cavae) and pump it, through the tricuspid valve, via right ventricle into the lungs pulmonary circulation so that carbon dioxide can be dropped off and oxygen can be taken up (exchange of gases). This happens through the passive process of diffusion. The left side heart collects oxygenated blood from the lungs into the left atrium. From the left atrium the blood moves to the left ventricle, through the bicuspid valve (mitral valve), which pumps it out to the body via the aorta. On both sides, the lower ventricles are thicker and stronger than the upper atria. The muscle wall surrounding the left ventricle is thicker than the wall surrounding the right ventricle due to the higher force needed to pump the blood through the systemic circulation

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