Real time acquisition and analysis of PCG and PPG signals

Photoplethysmography (PPG) and Phonocardiography (PCG) are two important non-invasive techniques for monitoring physiological parameters of cardiovascular diagnostics. The PCG signal discloses information about cardiac function through vibrations caused by the working heart. PPG measures relative blood volume changes in the blood vessels close to the skin. This paper emphasizes on simultaneous acquisition of PCG and PPG signals from the same subject with the aid of NIELVIS II+ DAQ and the signals are imported to MATLAB for further processing. Heart rate is extracted from both the signals which are found to be distinctive. This analytical approach of processing these signals can abet for analysis of Heart rate variability (HRV) which is widely used for quantifying neural cardiac control and low variability is particularly predictive of death in patients after myocardial infarction.