Acoustic Methods for Pulmonary Diagnosis

Abstract

Recent developments in sensor technology and computational analysis methods enable new strategies to measure and interpret lung acoustic signals that originate internally, such as breathing or vocal sounds, or are externally introduced, such as in chest percussion or airway insonification. A better understanding of these sounds has resulted in new instrumentation that allows for highly accurate as well as portable options for measurement in the hospital, in the clinic, and even at home. This review outlines instrumentation for acoustic stimulation and measurement of the lungs. We first review the fundamentals of acoustic lung signals and the pathophysiology of the diseases that these signals are used to detect. Then, we focus on different methods of measuring and creating signals that have been used in recent research for pulmonary disease diagnosis. These new methods, combined with signal processing and modeling techniques, lead to a reduction in noise, and allow improved feature extraction and signal classification. We conclude by presenting the results of human subject studies taking advantage of both the instrumentation and signal processing tools to accurately diagnose common lung diseases. This paper emphasizes the active areas of research within modern lung acoustics, and encourages the standardization of future work in this field.

Wearable Sensing and Telehealth Technology with Potential Applications in the Coronavirus Pandemic

“…The common types include crackles, wheezes, rhonchi, stridor, and squawks. A variety of lung pathologies and injuries result in adventitious respiratory sounds and/or alter sound transmission pathways, with both spectrally and regionally differing effects that, if properly quantified, may provide additional information about the severity and location of the trauma or disease [54]. For COVID-19, where there is currently an overall lack of clinical studies on respiratory sounds, a study has investigated lung sounds on patients with confirmed COVID-19 by lung auscultation, and shown that all patients (n=10) were found to have abnormal respiratory sounds [55].…”

Automatic Lung Health Screening Using Respiratory Sounds

“…Rao et al [ 19 ] discussed acoustic techniques for pulmonary analysis. They studied acoustic aspects for different lung diseases.…”

An innovative technology of an athlete’s organism functional reserves increase based on bioacoustical stimulation of the respiratory system

“…One of the urgent directions of sports medicine nowadays is an athlete's organism functional reserves increase on the basis of non-medicated (non-drug) technologies [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Such technologies include the technologies based on the influence of low-frequency vibrations on a person's respiratory system [7][8][9][10].…”