ValveHealthNet: a light deep learning model for accurate valvular heart disorder detection

Abstract

Valvular heart disease (VHD) is a significant global health issue, contributing to increased morbidity and mortality rates, particularly in aging populations. Current diagnostic methods, such as echocardiography and manual auscultation, face limitations in accessibility and accuracy, particularly in resource-constrained environments. This study introduces ValveHealthNet, a lightweight deep learning model designed to classify various VHDs using heart sound recordings. Leveraging a dataset of over 10,000 heart sounds, minimal preprocessing was applied by converting the audio signals into power spectra before feeding them into a convolutional neural network (CNN) combined with a bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) network. This model achieved impressive results, with an accuracy of 98% in training and testing and 98.4% through 10-fold cross-validation. This highly efficient model can be used in embedded systems, providing a cost-effective, AI-driven solution for early detection of VHD in settings where advanced diagnostic tools may be unavailable.