A Cardiac Screening Device

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad, long-term objectives and aims of this project are to provide a reliable and easily-used device for qualified health care professionals to screen for and detect heart murmurs produced from congenital and acquired cardiac defects in children and adults. The device will be designed to distinguish between innocent and pathological heart murmurs with a high degree of accuracy. The applicant organization, Cardiac Screening Partners, is a joint venture between Cardiac Access, Denver, Colorado and Cardionics, Inc., Webster, Texas. Cardiac Access is comprised of physicians and scientists with a past record of research in cardiac screening (specifically in heart murmurs) and artificial neural networks. Cardionics is a developer and manufacturer of medical devices specifically related to heart and lung sound instrumentation and software. The proposed research is designed to gather heart sound data from approximately 1600 in children (phase I) and later in adults (phase II). The data will be analyzed using state of the art digital signal analysis processing techniques and custom artificial neural network algorithms. The goal of Phase I research is to build on the success of the preliminary work done by our consultants by further refining and training of artificial neural network algorithms for accuracy in differentiating between innocent and pathologic heart murmurs.