Detecting Patent Ductus Arteriosus in Neonatal Phonocardiograms

During fetal development, ductus arteriosus allows blood ejected by the right ventricle to bypass the lung. The persistence of this ductus after birth however is considered pathological and is termed patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). Using phonocardiograms (PCGs) acquired from a digital stethoscope, the objective is to explore discriminatory features and statistically analyse them. In this research, we obtained 48 PCG recordings from 41 neonates. 17 recordings (15 neonates) had PDA, 8 recordings (7 neonates) had other heart structure abnormalities identified during echocardiography and were excluded in this study, and 23 recordings (21 neonates) had no heart structure abnormalities based on clinical assessment. Recordings were denoised using non-negative matrix co-factorization. Denoised phonocardiograms were then segmented into S1, systolic, S2, and diastolic periods. Temporal (durations and maximum values), statistical (variance, skewness, and kurtosis), and power (total power, and 25-100Hz, 25–45 Hz, 45–80 Hz, 100–200 Hz, and 200-400Hz band powers) were obtained for each heart segment and relative ratios between segments calculated. Statistical tests were then performed to identify significant features for discriminating PCG recordings.