Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 8, 2026

Ex Vivo Porcine Experimental Model for Studying and Teaching Lung Mechanics
Published on: April 19, 2024
Scaling behavior in crackle sound during lung inflation
A M Alencar1, Z Hantos, F Peták
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Abstract:
During slow inflation of lung lobes, we measure a sequence of short explosive transient sound waves called "crackles," each consisting of an initial spike followed by ringing. The crackle time series is irregular and intermittent, with the number of spikes of size s following a power law, n(s) proportional, variants(-alpha), with alpha=2.77+/-0.05. We develop a model of crackle wave generation and propagation in a tree structure that combines the avalanchelike opening of airway segments with the wave propagation of crackles in a tree structure. The agreement between experiments and simulations suggests that (i) the irregularities are a consequence of structural heterogeneity in the lung, (ii) the intermittent behavior is due to the avalanchelike opening, and (iii) the scaling is a result of successive attenuations acting on the sound spikes as they propagate through a cascade of bifurcations along the airway tree.
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