A Survey of Audio Processing Algorithms for Digital Stethoscopes

Abstract

Digital stethoscopes have been drawing the attention of the biomedical engineering community for some time now, as seen from patent applications and scientific publications. In the future, we expect 'intelligent stethoscopes' to assist the clinician in cardiac exam analysis and diagnostic, potentiating functionalities such as the teaching of auscultation, telemedicine, and personalized healthcare. In this paper we review the most recent heart sound processing publications, discussing their adequacy for implementation in digital stethoscopes. Our results show a body of interesting and promising work, although we identify three important limitations of this research field: lack of a set of universally accepted heart-sound features, badly described experimental methodologies and absence of a clinical validation step. Correcting these flaws is vital for creating convincing next-generation 'intelligent' digital stethoscopes that the medical community can use and trust.