Digital recording and computer-based analysis of lung sounds

The human ear is one of the most efficient instrument for detecting patterns in acoustic signals. Therefore, auscultation is an important and easy to use tool in clinical diagnostic routines. A computer-based system for recording and analysis of lung sounds cannot replace the human ear, but can complement it. We developed a hard disk recording system with high sampling rates of three channels to examine the possibility for a sound pattern detection system and applied it in patients and healthy volunteers