Design Optimization of 3D Printed Digital Stethoscope for Low-Cost Telemedicine

Modern day acoustic stethoscope is a necessary equipment to aid clinical practitioners in performing diagnosis on patients. For initial assessments and long-term medical evaluations, it is beneficial for patients to be able to monitor their health status between check-ups and for doctors to be able to diagnose patients remotely. In this work, the viability of MEMS-based digital stethoscope as an alternative solution for a low-cost diagnostic equipment is proposed. The impacts of various design parameters of a 3D-printed stethoscope’s chest-piece on the sound quality has been investigated. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) analysis of various designs achieved up to approximately 5.24 dB without any signal processing, indicating clear and audible heart sounds. In addition, the development and implementation of a novel web-based application with digital stethoscope is also proposed in this work for potential real-time remote auscultation.