The future of heart disease detection and prevention may have started with an opera singer.

When Dr. Joshua Hutcheson heard about how his wife — then a grad student — was studying how subtle changes in the vocal chords could affect a singer’s voice, he started thinking about the human heart in a completely new way.

He began to wonder: If trained ears can pick up imperceptible differences in voice, could artificial intelligence detect subtle changes in the sound of a heartbeat?

At Florida International University, Hutcheson is the Director at the Center for Innovation in Cardiovascular Health, where he leads a lab of the university's students and researchers to explore just that.

He began this line of research in 2018, aiming to better understand why cardiovascular diseases develop and

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