Abnormal Heart Sounds Detection using Mahalanobis-Taguchi Method

Abstract

Detecting abnormal heart sounds through auscultation is a necessary part of diagnosing heart disease. This paper presents a method for detecting abnormal heart sounds using the Mahalanobis-Taguchi Method. Six features of heart sounds are selected to find changes in cardiac activity. Reference data are created based on these six features calculated from normal cardiac sounds. Mahalanobis distance (MD) from the reference data is used as a measure to estimate abnormalities. The effectiveness of this method is evaluated with 24 clinical cases and yielding correct results in 100% for cardiac murmur except abnormal heart sounds with extra heartbeats. This method may also be used to find a symptom of heart disease by monitoring the trend of MD values in everyday healthcare management.