New analysis-synthesis of first heart sounds using forward-backward overdetermined Prony's method

The use of spectral analysis of heart sounds has been found to be an effective method for detecting different valvular disease and of studying the mechanism of heart action. The method used for spectral analysis is of crucial importance because the diagnostic ability of the technique depends on the accuracy of estimation of the heart sound spectrum. The authors present a new overdetermined forward-backward Prony's method (FBPM) which is superior to the modified backward Prony's method (MBPM) when applied to the analysis of first heart sounds (S1). The performance of the FBPM is compared with the MBPM using synthesised signals which are generated from a damped sinusoid model. Comparison of the results based on the least square error criterion show that the FBPM is more precise than MBPM with an improvement of up to 20%. The accuracy of this method makes it very attractive for diagnostic applications and investigating of the origins of S1.