Stand-alone portable digital body sound data acquisition device

Abstract

This paper discusses the design and implementation of a new generation of digital stethoscopes capable of collecting and processing body sound without the need of a personnel computer and hardware interface. The cost of the proposed device is a fraction of that of the data acquisition system used with current digital stethoscopes to collect body sound in a digital format. The new design uses system-on-chip technology and hardware-software co-design to integrate all the functions needed by this application into a single field programmable gate array (FPGA). The new design strategy saves hardware, space, and power consumption. It also allows for signal processing and data interpretation in the same device. The body sound device has been implemented and tested. Its performance compares very favourably to that of existing PC-based digital stethoscope.