Sonification system using synthesized realistic body sounds modified by other medically-important variables for physiological monitoring

Abstract

A method and apparatus are described for converting physiological information into sound, suitable for such applications as anesthesiological, intensive-care or exercise monitoring. Complex, realistic bodily sounds (e.g., heartbeat sound and/or breathing sound) are synthesized algorithmically, and directly reveal certain physiological variables such as heart rate or breathing rate. Changes in other physiological variables (e.g., blood pressure or carbon dioxide level) are indicated by changes in acoustic parameters of the realistic sound (e.g., pitch or timbre). A large number of these "piggyback" variables can be made audible by controlling a plurality of acoustic parameters simultaneously, taking advantage of the ability of the auditory system to process large quantities of information in parallel. The combination of realistic sounds with "piggyback" variables provides a novel means of monitoring physiological data with advantages over both the visual monitoring systems currently in widespread use and other proposed and existing sonic monitoring systems. Other improvements to existing sonification methods are taught, including "self-labeling" alarms and auxiliary sound mix-through.

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