Development of an Inexpensive, Recordable, DIY Digital Ultrasound‐coupled Stethoscope for Medical Education

Abstract

For approximately 20 years, electronic and digital stethoscopes have been available. These devices were developed with at least three goals: improving auscultation of heart sounds, saving phonocardiograms in a digital format, and sharing heart sounds over the internet (telemedicine). In the last five years these devices have become inexpensive and widely available, such that research on their use in medical education has been published. The publication record demonstrates improved student learning when using digital stethoscopes for training of auscultation. Despite the utility of electronic stethoscopes, drawbacks exist, primarily cost of the devices; many of the commercially available devices are still nearly US$500. The project described here makes use of low cost stethoscopes and microphone systems to produce DIY digital stethoscopes appropriate for medical education with a total per‐unit cost of only ~US$20. Other advantages of the new system described here (termed “DigiStet”) include opensource hardware and software, meaning the device can be modified for other applications by the end user. In addition to describing several methods of constructing wireless digital stethoscopes, this project describes the use of the “DigiStet” to record heart sounds while simultaneously recording synchronized ultrasound images of the heart. We are unaware of any publications on this novel use of the digital stethoscope, i.e. recording heart sounds and ultrasound images simultaneously. These recordings are demonstrated to students in conjunction with the Wigger's Diagram to help first‐year medical students better visualize heart structure, function, action, and auscultation. We are planning on conducting a focus group with the first‐year students after their cardiology module to assess their opinions of the new technology, assess their knowledge acquisition, and look for improvements to future iterations of the DigiStet.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.