Mechanical aspect of the heart sound emission

The present paper deals with a physical study of the relation between the phonocardiogram and left ventricular pressure (LVP) fluctuations. Fourier analysis comparison of the two signals-simultaneously recorded either on pathologic human hearts or during experiments on dogs-does not point out an obvious relation between the phonocardiogram and a linear combination of the first pressure derivatives.-A mechanical model of the heart enabling the description of the sound emission mechanism provides a qualitative relation between the phonocardiogram and LVP fluctuations: the acceleration of the thoracic area is equal to the product of LVP by a time function depending on the mechanical properties of the muscle. - A theoretical thoracic acceleration obtained by transformation of the experimental LVP is compared with the experimental phonocardiogram through linear filtering analysis. The theoretical signal is in good agreement with the experimental one.