Time-frequency analysis of skeletal muscle and cardiac vibrations

Skeletal muscle and the heart vibrate during contraction producing nonstationary signals whose time-varying frequency reflects dynamic changes in physiological properties. Consequently, pathological changes in the mechanical integrity or loading of skeletal muscle or the heart can be expected to alter their vibrations. Classic frequency analysis techniques have been inadequate to characterize these subtle changes because of rapidly varying frequency components. A poor understanding of heart and muscle sound generation has also limited investigations. This paper demonstrates how time-frequency (TF) techniques have illuminated the relationships between muscle/heart material properties and loading and frequency dynamics of heart and muscle vibrations. Studies of evoked twitches from frog skeletal muscle reveal that muscle vibrations occur as transverse oscillations at the muscle's resonant frequency. Using a classic Rayleigh-Ritz model and crude estimates of the muscle geometry, muscle force can be accurately predicted from the muscle sound TF profile. First heart sound vibrations, in contrast, are shown to be a nonresonant phenomena, consisting of propagating transients superimposed upon bulk acceleration of myocardial contraction. Consequently, first heart sound frequency dynamics depend upon cardiac electrical excitation and hemodynamic loading in addition to intrinsic material properties and geometry, necessitating further work to characterize pathophysiologic correlations.