Computer Cardiologist

Me and Faizan From UTP :)

UTP spirit in UNSW

Please check this link:

http://www.utp.edu.my/news/INPEX2007.php

One of the winning projects is the postgraduate project of Mr.Faizan Javed…..now a PhD. Student in UNSW.

I met him in a Landcare Neutralize camp in Blue Mountain organized by our school….believe it or not…the world is so small….

After I have met him, suddenly we felt that actually….we love UTP a lot…

Because…
We will be happy when we see people from UTP and treat them as our “Orang Kampung”…

We will complain a lot about UTP together, but in the end…said that it is a place with all the sweet, sour, bitter memories….

We will find that, UTP might be worse….but, we love it not because it is good…or great….is because…that is a place….where we were from… our university…

Back to topic,

If you have seen the news and the news published in the UTP website…you will be more proud of UTP and Malaysia…Since I know Faizan….and since we are so happy about his and his professor’s achievement….

We decided to post a small entry of interview with Faizan here, in my blog….

This is an interview…done through MSN

Faizan Javed says:
One of the research project s led by Prof. Dr. P.A. Venkatachalam won the Best Invention of the Pacific Rim through his project entitled “Computer Cardiologist”.

He also won 3 gold medals for 3 different categories i.e. Health/Fitness, Electrical/Electronics and Design (Technical).

Ok, as the name sounds its "Computer Cardiologist". The system has been developed to assist general physicians in rural areas in order to get expert consultation. It mainly uses heart sounds to detect and classify heart murmurs. I have three international publications in that project as well during my masters. I did my masters in a minimum duration of 1.5 years

Colourworld says:
So what are your future plans for the “computer cardiologists”?

Faizan Javed says:
My professor Prof. Dr. P.A. Venkatachalam is coming to Melbourne so I am actually going to see him to discuss further next week.

Colourworld says:
What is going to be discussed then?

Faizan Javed says:
I think regarding patent and to actually built the hardware for the product as so far the invention uses computer to diagnose in later we can come up with a device

Colourworld says:
Where did u get the inspiration to come out with such system?

Faizan Javed says:
It’s definitely my project; the idea came up after discussions with my supervisor and cardiologists in IJN. Our main collaborator was IJN. We collected patients’ data from there also we discussed our project with Fatimah hospital IPOH and Damansara Heart Center. So in total three hospitals were involved.

Colourworld says:
Is this device new invention or an innovation from the existing technology, and how efficient and important it is for the rural area?

When you interviewed the hospital, what were their main concerns about the impact of this device towards its patients and what is the most important feature in this device from a medical personnel’s perspective.

Faizan Javed says:
It’s a new creation that integrates two engineering fields. They are the signal processing and the expert system. In the rural areas there is no expert doctor available plus there is no advanced equipments so our main theme is to use basic equipment, in this case is the stethoscope and some how gather the knowledge of the expert in the computer so that the whole system will act as a cardiologist. It’s like a mobile cardiologist. Whenever you have a problem doctor first listen to your heart beat using stethoscope so we used the same technique, our system analyzes the heart beat to diagnose the heart problem.

Colourworld says:
Can you tell us how much does it costs for the equipment?

Faizan Javed says:
We have used electronic stethoscope that was around RM1200 only and the rest is the cost of the device that should not be more than 1000 RM, but definitely university has the right to decide its market costs. Overall the system does not use any expensive equipment. Another feature of this equipment is its portability.

Colourworld says:
How long did you take to complete the project and can you briefly tell us what major problems you have faced in the process?

Faizan Javed says:
It took us around 1.5 years. Definitely there are problems, its not 100 % perfect. The device is still under research phase. For medical diagnosis, the system has to be robust and reliable

So it took us a year or so to make the system is fully automated and works for all type of patients.

So far the selection of the threshold in analyzing heart sounds is done manually by trial and error method, because the recording of heart sounds has human error plus interference and noises from surroundings.