The heart of the matter

The reliable detection of low-intensity heart sounds in phonocardiogram (PCG) signals has been made possible with a new heart sound activity detection (HSAD) method. Dr. M. Sabarimalai Manikandan and Professor K.P. Soman from the Centre for Excellence in Computational Engineering and Networking, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in India, have developed a robust algorithm that can detect not only the loudest sounds, but also other heart events that are frequently missed, such as low-intensity heart sounds and murmurs.