Autonomous Learning Multiple-Model zero-order classifier for heart sound classification

This paper proposes a new extended zero-order Autonomous Learning Multiple-Model (ALMMo-0*) neuro-fuzzy approach in order to classify different heart disorders through sounds. ALMMo-0* is build upon the recently introduced ALMMo-0. In this paper ALMMo-0 is extended by adding a pre-processing structure which improves the performance of the proposed method. ALMMo-0* has as a learning engine composed of hierarchical a massively parallel set of 0-order fuzzy rules, which are able to self-adapt and provide transparent and human understandable IF ... THEN representation. The heart sound recordings considered in the analysis were sourced from several contributors around the world. Data were collected from both clinical and nonclinical environment, and from healthy and pathological patients. Differently from mainstream machine learning approaches, ALMMo-0* is able to learn from unseen data. The main goal of the proposed method is to provide highly accurate models with high transparency, interpretability, and explainability for heart disorder diagnosis. Experiments demonstrated that the proposed neuro-fuzzy-based modeling is an efficient framework for these challenging classification tasks surpassing its state-of-the-art competitors in terms of classification accuracy. Additionally, ALMMo-0* produced transparent AnYa type fuzzy rules, which are human interpretable, and may help specialists to provide more accurate diagnosis. Medical doctors can easily identify abnormal heart sounds by comparing a patient’s sample with the identified prototypes from abnormal samples by ALMMo-0*.