Web-Based Remote Respiratory and Swallowing Sound Monitoring

February 26, 2007 -- Researchers at TRLabs are developing a method for extracting and classifying swallowing sounds through digital signal processes.

Benefits…

  • Virtual patient-doctor interaction independent of distance
  • Non-invasive, objective method for swallowing disorder assessment
Background
 
Long distance monitoring and diagnostic tools provide financial savings to health care systems and families. Acute respiratory attacks and swallowing disorders are two very common diseases, which have not been targeted in tele-medicine. Currently, respiratory or swallowing disorders are assessed with a visit to a doctor’s office. In this ongoing project, a system is being developed in which microphones and/or accelerometers are used to record respiratory and/or swallowing sounds. A computer equipped with analog to digital converter card digitizes the sound and communicates the digitized signal to a data server located at the medical center. Received signals at the data server are analyzed by digital signal processing techniques.

In order to help specialists for a more reliable and objective diagnosis, some features of the respiratory or swallowing sounds such as spectrogram, time intervals, and average power within different frequency bands are extracted and displayed. Finally, these features along with other features (such as fractal dimension) are used for automated screening of healthy and possibly abnormal subjects. This system enables a patient to be in contact with specialist at a medical center virtually despite the distance of the parties. In addition, this system offers new and innovative methods for swallowing disorder assessment, which may be considered as a non-invasive and objective alternative for currently used methods.

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