Forth Heart Sound Detection Using Backward Time-Growing Neural Network

This paper presents a novel method for processing heart sound signal for screening forth heart sound (S4). The proposed method is based on time growing neural network with a new scheme, which we call the Backward Time-Growing Neural Network (BTGNN). The BTGNN is trained for detecting S4 in recordings of heart sound signal. In total, 83 children patients, referred to a children University hospital, participated in the study. The collected signals are composed of the subjects with and without S4 for training and testing the method. Performance of the method is evaluated using the Leave-One-Out and the repeated random sub sampling methods. The accuracy/sensitivity of the method is estimated to be 88.3%/82.4% and the structural risk is calculated to be 18.3% using repeated random sub sampling and the A-Test methods, respectively.