Estimation of echocardiogram parameters with the aid of impedance cardiography and artificial neural networks.

The advent of cardiovascular diseases as a disease of mass catastrophy, in recent years is alarming. It is expected to spread as an epidemic by 2030. Present methods of determining the health of one's heart include doppler based echocardiogram, MDCT (Multi Detector Computed Tomography), among various other invasive and non-invasive hemodynamic monitoring techniques. These methods require expert supervision and costly clinical set-ups, and cannot be employed by a common individual to perform a self diagnosis of one's cardiac health, unassisted. In this work, the authors propose a novel methodology using impedance cardiography (ICG), for the determination of a person's cardio-vascular health. The recorded ICG signal helps in extraction of features which are used for estimating parameters for cardiac health monitoring. The proposed methodology with the aid of artificial neural network is able to determine Stroke Volume (SV), Left Ventricular End Systolic Volume (LVESV), Left Ventricular End Diastolic Volume (LVEDV), Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF), Iso Volumetric Contraction Time (IVCT), Iso Volumetric Relaxation Time (IVRT), Left Ventricular Ejection Time (LVET), Total Systolic Time (TST), Total Diastolic Time (TDT), and Myocardial Performance Index (MPI), with error margins of ±8.9%, ±3.8%, ±1.4%, ±7.8%, ±16.0%, ±9.0%, ±9.7%, ±6.9%, ±6.2%, and ±0.9%, respectively. The proposed methodology could be used in screening of precursors to cardiac ailments, and to keep a check on the cardio-vascular health.