Respiratory Rate Estimation from Tracheal Sound Analysis Using a Mobile Application for Smartphones Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • Diagnosing several lung diseases is challenging and usually requires various methods and tests, including a patient’s clinical history, auscultation, spirometry, pulmonary function tests, and other methods using more specialized medical devices. For its part, the pulmonary auscultation with the mechanic stethoscope represents an early approach to the disease. However, it is highly subjective. Therefore, acquiring and analyzing respiratory sounds through mobile computerized devices, such as smartphones, has been an attractive alternative for the estimation of physiological parameters, including respiratory rate (RR). This study explored the estimation of RR performed completely on a single smartphone device, from the tracheal sound acquisition, signal conditioning and processing, and results report. To this end, a mobile application was developed for the Android system, and acquisitions were made in ten (N = 10) healthy volunteers while breathing at different metronome RR. The results obtained with the app were compared with the ones obtained from a respiratory reference signal. Mean absolute errors of 0.06, 0.18, 0.66 and 0.54 bpm were found for RR of 6, 12, 18 and 24 bpm, respectively. The promising results point out to test the mobile-developed system in breathing maneuvers that include temporal changes in RR. © 2024, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

publication date

  • 2024-01-01