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Updated: Feb 20, 2026

Semi-automated Optical Heartbeat Analysis of Small Hearts
Published on: September 16, 2009
Pattern discovery and similarity assessment for robust heart sound segmentation
Abstract:
Heart Sound Segmentation plays a fundamental role in pathology detection in Phonocardiogram (PCG) signals. This matter of study has been widely studied in the past decades, however the majority of algorithms' results correspond only to small databases, composed by only quality signals or signals specific to one acquisition system. In this work we proposed a robust segmentation algorithm integrated with clinical information, based on a pattern recognition approach for segmentation of the fundamental heart sounds, which is validated in several databases from different countries and with different acquisition instrumentations. The database comprises a total of 3153 recordings from 764 patients with a variety of pathological conditions. The general results were 95% and 96% of sensitivity and positive predictivity, respectively. Based on the results the algorithm is able to perform with accuracy maintaining generalization capabilities.
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