Processing of Prosthetic Heart Valve Sounds from Anechoic Tank Measurements

Conference · Tue Mar 20 04:00:00 EST 2001

OSTI ID:15005285

Candy, J V; Meyer, A W

People with serious cardiac problems have had their life span extended with the development of the prosthetic heart valve. However, the valves operate continuously at approximately 39 million cycles per year and are therefore subject to structural failures either by faulty design or material fatigue. The development of a non-invasive technique using an acoustic contact microphone and sophisticated signal processing techniques has been proposed and demonstrated on limited data sets. In this paper we discuss an extension of the techniques to perform the heart valve tests in an anechoic like. Here the objective is to extract a ''pure'' sound or equivalently the acoustical vibration response of the prosthetic valves in a quiet environment. The goal is to demonstrate that there clearly exist differences between values which have a specific mechanical defect known as single leg separation (SLS) and non-defective valves known as intact (INT). We discuss the signal processing and results of anechoic acoustic measurements on 50 prosthetic valves in the tank. Finally, we show the results of the individual runs for each valve, point out any of the meaningful features that could be used to distinguish the SLS from INT and summarize the experiments.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy (US)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 15005285
• Report Number(s): UCRL-JC-143052
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION
60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES
ACOUSTIC MEASUREMENTS
ACOUSTICS
DEFECTS
DESIGN
LEGS
LIFE SPAN
PROCESSING
TANKS
VALVES