The Development of an Intelligent Electronic Stethoscope

This paper presents a new concept of home diagnosis system, which is based on an electronic stethoscope and intelligent analyzing software. Heart signal analyzing algorithms as well as the whole developing processes are going to be discussed, which include electronic hardware, embedded system, USB communication, and new designs of the stethoscope. The analyzing software is implemented in LabVIEW, detecting heart sound and separating the signal into two parts automatically: the systolic - the first heart sound (S1) and the diastolic - the second heart sound (S2). The system consequently builds a database of patients including their normal S1 and S2, besides a series of heart disease murmurs are also stored as patterns. The diagnosis algorithm is based on pattern approximation method. Today a pre-industry prototype is available which will be tested by some potential customers and professionals.