Towards a Wearable, High Precision, Multi-Functional Stethoscope.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Medical Devices
• Cardiology

Background:

• Neonatal cardiology requires high-quality heart sound data for diagnosing conditions like congenital heart disease (CHD).
• Traditional stethoscopes and existing digital versions face limitations in data quality and artifact reduction.
• Assessing new digital stethoscopes on neonates is challenging due to health and safety concerns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and implement a low-power digital stethoscope using optical and electrical sensors.
• To develop a simulation framework for evaluating Phonocardiogram (PCG) quality in neonatal applications.
• To enable edge-based AI analysis of high-fidelity PCG data for improved neonatal cardiac diagnostics.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel low-power digital stethoscope prototype.
• Implementation of a simulation framework to generate and assess PCG signals.
• Evaluation of the stethoscope's performance in minimizing artifacts compared to traditional methods.
• Focus on applications in neonatal cardiology, specifically for congenital heart disease (CHD) detection.

Main Results:

• The designed digital stethoscope effectively acquires high-quality PCG data.
• The simulation framework provides a reliable method for assessing PCG quality without human participants.
• The device demonstrates reduced artifacts, crucial for accurate neonatal heart sound analysis.
• The potential for wearable, continuous PCG monitoring was established.

Conclusions:

• The developed low-power digital stethoscope offers a promising solution for neonatal cardiology.
• The simulation framework addresses the challenge of evaluating devices on neonates.
• The technology facilitates advanced AI-assisted analysis for early detection of congenital heart disease (CHD).
• The device's design supports continuous, artifact-minimized PCG acquisition.