INTRODUCTION

HEART MURMUR

A heart murmur is an unusual sound heard between heartbeats, often described as a whooshing or swishing noise, as blood flows through the heart or nearby blood vessels. It’s typically detected using a stethoscope during a physical exam. Heart murmurs can be harmless or indicate an underlying heart condition (abnormal), such as valve defects, congenital heart issues, or other cardiac abnormalities. Further tests, like echocardiograms, are often required to determine the cause if a murmur is abnormal.

OUR PROJECT 

This project focuses on the analysis and detection of heart murmurs and arrhythmias using heart sound signals. Audio data, captured via a stethoscope (e.g., 14998_MV.wav), undergo preprocessing with band-pass filtering (20–1500 Hz) to remove noise. The signal’s envelope is extracted using the Hilbert transform, followed by peak detection to identify S1 and S2 sounds, segmenting the heart cycle into systolic and diastolic intervals.

Heart rate is estimated from peak intervals, and murmurs are identified based on abnormal frequency patterns. Additionally, the system detects arrhythmias such as bradycardia, tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, and heart block. Time-frequency analysis using Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) further aids in visualizing sound characteristics.

This project demonstrates how heart audio recordings, combined with signal processing techniques, can offer early detection of cardiac abnormalities and support future automated diagnostics.