Electronic Stethoscope Filtering Mimics the Perceived Sound Characteristics of Acoustic Stethoscope

Electronic stethoscopes offer several advantages over conventional acoustic stethoscopes, including noise reduction, increased amplification, and ability to store and transmit sounds. However, the acoustical characteristics of electronic and acoustic stethoscopes can differ significantly, introducing a barrier for clinicians to transition to electronic stethoscopes. This work proposes a method to process lung sounds recorded by an electronic stethoscope, such that the sounds are perceived to have been captured by an acoustic stethoscope. The proposed method calculates an electronic-to-acoustic stethoscope filter by measuring the difference between the average frequency responses of an acoustic and an electronic stethoscope to multiple lung sounds. To validate the method, a change detection experiment was conducted with 51 medical professionals to compare filtered electronic, unfiltered electronic, and acoustic stethoscope lung sounds. Participants were asked to detect when transitions occurred in sounds comprising several sections of the three types of recordings. Transitions between the filtered electronic and acoustic stethoscope sections were detected, on average, by chance (sensitivity index equal to zero) and also detected significantly less than transitions between the unfiltered electronic and acoustic stethoscope sections (p < 0.01), demonstrating the effectiveness of the method to filter electronic stethoscopes to mimic an acoustic stethoscope. This processing could incentivize clinicians to adopt electronic stethoscopes by providing a means to shift between the sound characteristics of acoustic and electronic stethoscopes in a single device, allowing for a faster transition to new technology and greater appreciation for the electronic sound quality.