The breath sound analysis for diseases diagnosis and stress measurement

Abstract

This research paper describes the study of the breath sound analysis and application development for two fold purposes: (1) for diseases diagnosis tool, specifically the lung and respiratory diseases; and (2) for stress measurement. The Lung Diseases Diagnosis Application consists of software and hardware components which formed a first-hand diagnosis tool of the lung diseases, to support the paramedics/doctors in lung diseases diagnosis. One of the most common and proven technique for lung disease diagnosis is the Auscultation, the term refers to listening to the internal sounds of the respiratory system (breath sounds), usually by using a stethoscope. However, this diagnosis way depends heavily on the listening skills and judgment of the paramedics/doctors only. In this research, we develop a new diagnosis tool with a new front-end equipment for the lung diseases diagnosis application: hand-phone equipped with a highly sensitive microphone, to record the breath-sound. This recorded breath-sound is then processed to generate the lung sound, which is approximately similar with the lung-sound heard and recorded by a stethoscope and the lung-sound is analysed to diagnose whether the patient's lung is healthy or not. This application would hopefully support the paramedics/doctors mobility to rural areas as well as remote diagnosis. The requirement is to create a first-hand diagnostic tool which allows paramedic mobility to rural areas for lung diseases diagnostic purposes. The study first describes about the existing lung diseases diagnostic tools and researches, stress measurement, then analysis and preliminary design of lung diseases diagnosis application. To enable each Lung Health Public Council (Balai Besar Kesehatan Paru Masyarakat) and Hospitals as data owner to maintain its own data, and to provide the data confidentiality as well, the cloud computing environment is then applied. Hopefully this research could serve both purposes: the lung diseases diagnosis and stress measurement.