Development of Acoustic Instruments for Diagnosis and Management of Medical Conditions

The stethoscope has been so widely used by clinicians in the diagnosis and management of patients' illnesses that it has virtually become a symbol of the medical profession. Indeed, as pointed out by Reiser in Scientific American, the invention of the stethoscope by Laennec revolutionized medicine, changing it from an art to a science [1]. Another revolution is now going on. Auscultation of the chest is now being computerized. One of the forces driving this computerization is that it offers the promise of providing improved instruments for noninvasive diagnosis, i.e., tools that do not invade the body or involve the harmful effects of radiation. Comprehensive reviews of the stethoscope's use in auscultation of the lung and of the development of computerized analysis of lung sounds have been presented [2]–[4]. There are also some more recent publications that report on employing advanced signal processing techniques for the detection of adventitious sounds that have been developed by a few groups in the field of lung sounds research [6], [7]. This discussion will focus on clinically important applications of this type of investigation and, in particular, on the development of multichannel lung sound analysis and its clinical importance.