Embedded Linux On a Digital Stethoscope

An anonymous reader writes "A team of electrical and computer engineering students at Calvin College is designing a digital electronic stethoscope running uClinux as its operating system. While there are many embedded devices built on Linux operating systems, medical devices running open-source software are extremely rare because of the perceived difficulty in obtaining FDA validation. The device is in its early stages of development, but major hardware choices have been made, and the team has recently released a Project Proposal and Feasibility Study."

Comments

Re:this linux crazyness...

[dangitman]

No. There was a project to port Linux to the spoon, but there was a lot of infighting about future directions and major members left, so the project was effectively shelved.

You are wrong about this one. The spoon project still exists. It just got sporked.

limited clinical usefullness

[ericcantona]

littmann make a variety of stethoscopes including digital ones, and have done for some time.

However, dont believe the hype. They are of very limited clinical value. No hospital cardiology diagnosis these days would be based on auscultation. (echocardiography would be used). For taking BP the traditional tube plus ear-pieces 'scope more than suffices.

Archiving, Comparing, etc.

[DrYak]

Disclaimer : I A A MD.

Currently, any exam can be recorded, stored, shared with an expert for additional advices, compared for reference, you can build libraries for teaching or for personnal reference, you can reprocess these data off-line to "clean them", you can mine them to discover whatever interests you, you can reproduce that data using a different way to display it (using false color instead of greys to help visualise contrasts, or more complex math like using fast fourier to transform Doppler-echo noises into a nice colored graphic) etc...

This include everything from the most high tech devices like 3D scanners, MRIs, etc. to the most simple technical examination (electrocardiograms) or even the most trivial step in examination : overall visual aspect (digital photo cameras are a very valuable tool in several arrays of medicine including dermatology and surgery).

And with all this digitalised information, you can even throw computer at the task of helping the clinicians. MRIs comes easily as an example where computer may help making something useful out of the data. But even much simpler exams like electro cardiogramme nowadays include small embed chip that can automatically recognise a couple of pathologies. Most modern machine will print in nice small message like "90% suspicion of grade I atrio-ventricular blocking", in addition of the actual tracks.
(And in fact modern defibrillator heavily rely on on-board electronic intelligence. The iron-like you still see in movies aren't used that much. The modern ones are semi automatic : you stick two big electrodes on the front and side of the chest. the machine goes automatically an ECG, decide the procedure to follow, and announce on a small embed screen and using voice. The practitioner only has to push a button to confirm and do the shock if he agrees with the machine's conclusions. Everything is automatic and comes with voice instruction so even untrained personal could use it).

Everything recordable and digitilized ? No. Nearly everything.
The century old stethoscope isn't. You use it, you hear something, but you can't share it or store it for further reference.
Meanwhile, there's a lot of information that trained doctor can hear in the stethoscope.
But it's hard to show to other (you can store it in a library to keep it for a lecture, you can't point it with a finger on the graph to a student), the student need luck to be around when there's something interesting for her/him to hear. It can't be reproduced.
It's almost some kind of voodoo art, where you have a couple of old expert who can diagnose almost anything with a simple stethoscope and by looking how the patient walk to enter the room. But they can't easily transmit their art. Sometimes you just wish you could keep them stored in formaldehyde.

This gadget that those engineer are working on is a nice alternative to the formaline. A simple gadget that'll help store, archive, send, etc. the noises you may encounter when examining with a stethoscope.

Also, I happen to be a little bit hard hearing. Not much. I doesn't pose any problem in normal life (I can enjoy classical music concerts for example). But when it comes to hearth noises, I start to show my limits and I suck with a stethoscope.
Such a device could enable me to obtain better (cleaned of noise) signal. Or even, as the devices use apparently open source software (uCLinux), it won't be too difficult to bolt in some crypto+network capability and display a visual representation of the sound on my Palm's screen.

I really think that throwing some electronics inside the stethoscope was long due, and I'm happy that the problem is currently being tackled with open source software.