Phase delay of pulmonary acoustic transmission from trachea to chest wall

The frequency-dependent propagation time, or phase delay tau (f), of sonic noise transmission from the trachea to the chest wall was estimated over the 100-600 Hz frequency range using a phase estimation technique from measurements performed on eight healthy subjects. Since tau (f) can be greater than one period of the input signal at frequencies greater than 100 Hz, the unambiguous phase estimate at 100 Hz was used as a starting-point to determine the phase angle H(f) and tau (f) at higher frequencies under the constraint that the spectra did not exhibit large point-to-point discontinuities. The resulting tau (f) range of 0.9-4.1 ms is consistent with sound propagation to the chest wall through both airways and surrounding parenchyma. The frequency and spatial dependence of tau (f) indicates that with increasing frequency more sonic energy travels further into the branching airway structure before coupling into the parenchyma. These results suggest that information concerning distinct regional lung structures may be obtained by probing the system acoustically over selected frequency bands.