A robust method for S1/S2 heart sounds detection without ecg reference based on music beat tracking

We present a robust method for the detection of the first and second heart sounds (s1 and s2), without ECG reference, based on a music beat tracking algorithm. An intermediate representation of the input signal is first calculated by using an onset detection function based on complex spectral difference. A music beat tracking algorithm is then used to determine the location of the first heart sound. The beat tracker works in two steps, it first calculates the beat period and then finds the temporal beat alignment. Once the first sound is detected, inverse Gaussian weights are applied to the onset function on the detected positions and the algorithm is run again to find the second heart sound. At the last step s1 and s2 labels are attributed to the detected sounds. The algorithm was evaluated in terms of location accuracy as well as sensitivity and specificity and the results showed good results even in the presence of murmurs or noisy signals.