Advances in Noninvasive Diagnosis Based on Body Sounds and Vibrations – A Review

This paper provides a brief overview of the advances in the area of early identification of different types of abnormalities and diseases, including respiratory illnesses and cardiovascular diseases, using noninvasive screening of biomedical acoustic signals. These signals include sounds and vibrations generated by different human body organs and systems that can be measured on the body surface using sensors such as stethoscopes and accelerometers. In this study, the measurement methods and signal processing algorithms for customized feature extraction and classification as well as clinical potentials, current limitations, and future directions are briefly reviewed and discussed.