RESEARCH ARTICLE
Color Spectrographic Analysis of Respiratory Sounds: A Promising Technology for Respiratory Monitoring
Daniel J. Doyle1, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2020Volume: 14
First Page: 22
Last Page: 29
Publisher ID: TOATJ-14-22
DOI: 10.2174/2589645802014010022
Article History:
Received Date: 19/01/2020Revision Received Date: 15/04/2020
Acceptance Date: 25/04/2020
Electronic publication date: 15/06/2020
Collection year: 2020
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
The need for reliable respiratory monitoring has increased in recent years with the frequent use of opioids for perioperative pain management as well as a high prevalence of patients suffering from respiratory comorbidities.
Objective:
Motivated by the success of acoustical color spectrographic techniques in other knowledge domains, we sought to build proof-of-concept systems for the computer-based color spectrographic analysis of respiratory sounds, recorded from various sites.
Methods:
We used a USB miniature electret microphone and a Windows-based color spectrographic analysis package to obtain color spectrograms for breath sound recordings from the neck, from an oxygen mask, from the ear canal, and from a leak-free microphone pneumatically connected to the cuff of a laryngeal mask airway.
Results:
Potentially useful color spectrographic displays were obtained from all four recording sites, although the spectrograms obtained varied in their characteristics. It was also found that obtaining high-quality color spectrograms requires attention to a number of technical details.
Conclusion:
Color spectrographic analysis of respiratory sounds is a promising future technology for respiratory monitoring.