Color Spectrographic Analysis of Respiratory Sounds: A Promising Technology for Respiratory Monitoring

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.

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.

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.

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.

Color spectrographic analysis of respiratory sounds is a promising future technology for respiratory monitoring.