Detection of mitral stenosis by a pulsed Doppler flowmeter and autoregressive spectral analysis method

In this study, Doppler signals are recorded from normal patients and patients with mitral stenosis by using a pulsed Doppler unit. The sample volume is located at the ventriculer side of the mitral valve orifice with the aid of an integrated cardiac imaging facility. The analog signal at the output of the Doppler unit is sampled and digitised using an analog/digital interface board and transferred to a personal computer. The data are then analysed using both FFT and AR modeling methods of spectral analysis, and sonograms are obtained. Results show that the AR method offers a superior performance over the FFT method regarding the assessment of mitral stenosis