Anglia Ruskin University

PhD research student: Steve Abbott
Supervisory team: Prof Paul Ingle, Mr Alan Hopkins
Funding bodies:
(1) The Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust - £19,000
(2) Sylvia Aitken Charitable Trust - £3,000

Auscultation has been successfully employed as an aid to the diagnosis of a wide range of medical conditions for well over a century. With the very recent development of the digital stethoscope and the power of computer based digital processing, it is now possible to record the sounds used for auscultation and develop recognition models allowing a computer to automatically detect a range of medical conditions.

This research employs a Littmann model 4000 digital stethoscope to capture sounds in various parts of the human body. These sounds are then converted to waveforms through digital processing techniques, allowing the detailed analysis needed for the construction of recognition models to take place, using neural network techniques. A hand held device, of similar dimensions to a scientific calculator, is being devised to be used with the digital stethoscope to capture the acoustic data to provide assistance to the clinician.