A Portable Low-Cost Electronic Stethoscope Design with Software Tools

Abstract

– We have designed a portable low-cost stethoscope with software tools. It is aimed to pre-diagnose heart diseases in a short time without exposing the patient to detailed examinations and additional procedures such as electro-cardiography (ECG) or angiography. It is important to develop such assistive systems, especially in order to reduce the burden of experienced physicians and to assist inexperienced physicians and thus saving time. For this purpose, first, the heart sound is converted into an electrical signal, and amplification and filtering in both hardware and software is implemented. The heart sound signal is obtained digitally and displayed on the monitor in segmented form. Physicians can classify the attributes of the cardiac cycles by examining the segmented S1 and S2 cardiac cycles, thereby establishing whether the heart sound is normal or abnormal.