METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR HEART RATE MEASUREMENT

• US 20130211273A1
• Filed: 07/19/2012
• Published: 08/15/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/13/2012
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: National Taiwan University (Government of The Republic of China)
• Original Assignee: National Taiwan University (Government of The Republic of China)
• Inventors: CHEN, Liang-Gee, Chen, Yu-Hsin, Chen, Hong-Hui
• Application Number:
  US13/552,884
• Publication Number:
  US 20130211273A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/528
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/024 Detecting, measuring or recording pulse rate or heart rate A61B5/0205, A61B5/021 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7203 for noise prevention, reduction or removal
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7225 Details of analog processing, e.g. isolation amplifier, gain or sensitivity adjustment, filtering, baseline or drift compensation A61B5/30, A61B5/316 take precedence; transformers for specific applications H01F38/00; amplifiers H03F
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7264 Classification of physiological signals or data, e.g. using neural networks, statistical classifiers, expert systems or fuzzy systems neural networks per se G06N3/00; expert systems per se G06N5/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 7/00 Instruments for auscultation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems

Abstract

The present invention provides a method for heart rate measurement, comprising the steps of: receiving a current heart sound signal from a channel; processing the current heart sound signal to be a pre-processed heart sound signal; receiving a template signal of a template database obtained independently from the current heart sound signal; and calculating a conformity between the pre-processed heart sound signal and the template signal to obtain a heart rate signal representing the pre-processed heart sound signal.

Claims

1. A method for heart rate measurement, comprising the steps of:

receiving a current heart sound signal from a channel;

processing the current heart sound signal to be a pre-processed heart sound signal;

receiving a template signal of a template database obtained independently from the current heart sound signal; and

calculating a conformity between the pre-processed heart sound signal and the template signal to obtain a heart rate signal representing the pre-processed heart sound signal.

2. The method for heart rate measurement according to claim 1, wherein the channel is a microphone.

3. The method for heart rate measurement according to claim 1, wherein the template database is a cloud-based database comprising a plurality of template signals.

4. The method for heart rate measurement according to claim 3, wherein another template signal of the template database will be received when the conformity is lower than a predetermined value.

5. The method for heart rate measurement according to claim 1, wherein the step of processing the current heart sound signal to be a pre-processed heart sound signal is performed by a band-pass filter, a decimation filter, an absolute-value generator and a low-pass filter.

6. The method for heart rate measurement according to claim 1, wherein the step of calculating a conformity between the pre-processed heart sound signal and the template signal is performed by a vector distance calculating unit and a high conformity conversion unit.

7. The method for heart rate measurement according to claim 1, wherein the template signal has a length in a range between about 0.7 second and 1.0 second.

8. An apparatus for heart rate measurement, comprising:

a heart sound signal processor configured to receive a current heart sound signal from a channel and process the current heart sound signal to be a pre-processed heart sound signal; and

a conformity calculating device configured to receive a template signal of a template database obtained independently from the current heart sound signal and calculate a conformity between the pre-processed heart sound signal and the template signal to obtain a heart rate signal representing the pre-processed heart sound signal.

9. The apparatus for heart rate measurement according to claim 8, wherein the channel is a microphone.

10. The apparatus for heart rate measurement according to claim 8, wherein the template database is a cloud-based database comprising a plurality of template signals.

11. The apparatus for heart rate measurement according to claim 10, wherein another template signal of the template database will be received when the conformity is lower than a predetermined value.

12. The apparatus for heart rate measurement according to claim 8, wherein the heart sound signal processor comprises a band-pass filter, a decimation filter, an absolute-value generator and a low-pass filter.

13. The apparatus for heart rate measurement according to claim 8, wherein the conformity calculating device comprises a vector distance calculating unit and a high conformity conversion unit.

14. The apparatus for heart rate measurement according to claim 8, wherein the template signal has a length in a range between about 0.7 second and 1.0 second.