Premature babies in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) require monitoring for signs of lung congestion and heart murmurs. Currently NICU medical personnel use acoustic stethoscopes. The use of acoustic stethoscope has a number of highly undesirable side effects including withdrawal response, flinching, apnea, hypoxemia, change in sleep state, and possibility of contamination. The ability to share auscultatory findings among medical personnel is also a problem because of observer variability. In addition, auscultation is not done simultaneously and findings may change over short time intervals. As an acoustic stethoscope is not ideal in the NICU settings for the reasons mentioned above, the development of a non-contact optical stethoscope is proposed.
The non-contact stethoscope could greatly improve the quality of care for neonates. The optical stethoscope will be also available for general auscultation of heart and lung sounds in children and adults, where it could make a difference by eliminating the rubbing artifacts, finger noise and cross-contamination problems.
