A Novel Approach in Auscultation Technology - New Sensors and Algorithms

Sounds generated inside the body can provide valuable diagnostic information. The first stethoscopes were designed in the 19th century, however, nowadays we are witnessing rapid advances in auscultatory technologies. This paper describes the development and application of auscultation transducers and algorithms that allow to classify acoustic signals. Sensors are integrated with a dedicated acquisition unit developed in our research group. This device is equipped with analog conditioning circuits and an ADC module. In the final stage of this research, the recorded data was processed with the automatic classification algorithms. The obtained results are promising in terms of further development.