Heart Sound Classification Network Based on Convolution and Transformer.

Abstract

Electronic auscultation is vital for doctors to detect symptoms and signs of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), significantly impacting human health. Although progress has been made in heart sound classification, most existing methods require precise segmentation and feature extraction of heart sound signals before classification. To address this, we introduce an innovative approach for heart sound classification. Our method, named Convolution and Transformer Encoder Neural Network (CTENN), simplifies preprocessing, automatically extracting features using a combination of a one-dimensional convolution (1D-Conv) module and a Transformer encoder. Experimental results showcase the superiority of our proposed method in both binary and multi-class tasks, achieving remarkable accuracies of 96.4%, 99.7%, and 95.7% across three distinct datasets compared with that of similar approaches. This advancement holds promise for enhancing CVD diagnosis and treatment.