- Researchers assessed the feasibility of using a smartphone’s inbuilt microphone to record heart sounds by investigating the particular quality associated with smartphone-recorded coronary heart sounds and the factors influencing the quality of the recordings.
- Overall, three out of four recordings were associated with good quality, meaning that they could be processed further in order to obtain medically relevant data.
- The results indicate that will heart sound quality is not influenced by phone version or by the user’s biological sex, but users aged over 60 seemed to have lower-quality songs.
- This study paves the particular way for a future where individuals, particularly those with heart problems, can easily record their own heart sounds at home, thus improving the diagnostic process.
Everyone is familiar with the particular “lub-dub… lub-dub” sounds the heart makes. The reason that the heart makes these sounds is related to its function of circulating blood throughout the body.
The heart muscle pumps blood by continuously contracting plus relaxing. During contraction associated with the center, we hear the “lub” sound, known as the first cardiovascular sound, S1, and during relaxation of the heart, all of us hear the particular “dub” sound —the second heart audio, S2.
The traditional tool used by doctors to listen to heart sounds is the stethoscope .
Coronary heart sounds may be a good useful marker in heart failure , but currently, they are only assessed in a clinical setting. It would be useful for patients to be able to report their own heart sounds when they are at home.
One possible way in which coronary heart sounds might be easily captured simply by individuals in the comfort of their own homes is by using a mobile phone with an inbuilt high-quality microphone. To date, several mobile app prototypes with regard to recording center sounds have been developed and made available to the public, including
Now, researchers in King’s College London in the United Kingdom and Maastricht University within the Netherlands possess conducted a study to investigate the feasibility of using a smart phone as the stethoscope plus to assess the potential aspects that influence the high quality of cardiovascular sound recordings.
“This research proves that mobile technologies are a viable way of recording heart seems and that will in the future, cardiac patients and doctors could use at-home recordings to check for [the] existence or even progression of heart conditions, ” says Dr. Pablo Lamata , study co-author and professor of biomedical engineering from King’s University London.
The results of this study appeared in the European Center Journal – Digital Health .
In collaboration with heart patients through the British Cardiovascular Foundation (BHF) and Evelina Children’s Heart Organization (ECHO), plus with experts at Cellule Design Studio , the researchers developed the smartphone application that measures heart sound.
To use the Echoes app , the user only needs to place their smartphone on their chest and press “record. ” The application has a signal processing algorithm that filters the center sound songs to remove any background noise.
The Echoes app asks users in order to voluntarily provide anonymous basic demographics including age, sex, height, weight, and, if applicable, any heart problems.
Between May 21 plus October 4, 2021, 1, 148 individuals downloaded the particular Echoes application and contributed 7, 597 heart audio recordings, which were uploaded to a Google Firebase database.
The particular researchers found that eight out of 10 (80%) users were able to make a good quality heart sound recording. A “good quality” recording is one that will can be interpreted regarding analysis.
Overall, 3 from four (75%) recordings could be prepared further to obtain clinically relevant information.
The researchers then looked with the elements affecting the quality associated with the very center sound recordings among these users. They discovered that the following factors do not impact the quality of the particular recordings:
- phone version
- user’s natural sex.
However, the researchers observed that customers aged over 60 had lower-quality songs.
During his doctoral thesis defense, Dr . Hongxing Luo , research co-author and postdoctoral researcher at Maastricht University argued that the particular issue of low-quality coronary heart sound recordings by older users may be overcome.
One of the easiest solutions, he said, is in order to instruct the users to use an earpiece to listen to their own heart sounds while they search intended for the position along with the loudest heart noises.
Since hospitals already have several tools to evaluate the guts circumstances of patients, such as a good echocardiogram (ECG) and
- heart failure patients
- post-operative follow-up associated with patients with valvular center disease
- post-operative follow-up of arrhythmia patients.
Dr. Lamata described the particular Echoes app as “a tool to empower individual[s] to manage their own situations. ”
Dr . James Leiper , professor of molecular medicine at the University of Glasgow and Associate Medical Director in the British Heart Foundation, notes:
“As we all enter the age of digital medicine, technologies like Echoes could revolutionize the diagnosis and at-home monitoring associated with heart conditions. Further research is needed in order to test how the application can become used within tandem along with existing cardiovascular monitoring techniques. However, in case successful, this particular development can mark an important step towards having heart monitoring equipment at your fingertips. ”
Dr. Dominik Linz , professor within the physiology of circulation, kidney, and lung at the University associated with Copenhagen, pointed out that will it is important pertaining to researchers to identify “specific thresholds meant for [heart sound measurements] which should result in action” by the cardiologist assessing the particular patient’s data via the Echoes app.
One study limitation will be that the particular Echoes app was just available designed for iPhone users, thus excluding Android customers — who account just for more than half of overall mobile phone users — from the research.
When asked when the Echoes app would become obtainable to the wider public, Dr. Pablo Lamata, told Healthcare News Today : “We are now planning our next release, in order to also include an Android edition, hopefully simply by May next year. ”
The Echoes app presently only detects the S1 and S2 heart sounds, and the researchers commented that “the usefulness associated with recognizing pathological heart noises including S3, S4, plus murmurs, has to be investigated inside a future study involving patients. ”
The experts also noted that the particular study population may not reflect a truly general population “because smartphone users are likely younger and more educated. ” Further studies needed to measure the reproducibility of these results.