The present invention is a method and system for detection of high-frequency heart sounds for diagnosing heart diseases. One embodiment utilizes an accelerometer-based detector that presents a light load to the chest, is sensitive to the desired high frequency range, and provides a quantitative measurement of the quality of the acquired signal. Two thin piezoelectric flexible sensors, supported by a lightweight mechanical structure, are center-loaded so that they respond to the same mechanical energy and will produce identical electrical signals in the absence of noise. A signal processing system compares the signals from the two sensors to produce an estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio. The two signals can be combined to further improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The invention is designed to be light weight, to have a sensitive sensor mechanism, to provide an estimate of the signal-to-noise ratio of the detected signal, and to be relatively immune to noise.
