Resonant chamber sound pick-up

Abstract

A noise-reducing resonant chamber sound pick-up for electronic stethoscopes is claimed. It consists of a resonating chamber (24) which acoustically preamplifies the selected frequencies of heart sounds, 50-150 hz, and bruits of breath or blood, 150-500 hz, while rejecting ambient sounds. A skin contact (34) has elastic foam support (14), whose rigidity is varied by varying the applied pressure, in order to select the preamplified band of sounds. The other side of the resonating chamber contains a sound transducer (10) largely encased in heavy malleable metal (12) that absorbs sound not coming from the chamber. A damping vent hole (26) shapes the band of preamplified sounds. The resulting superior signal-to-noise ratio permits two, small chambers to be used in a stereophonic chest piece little larger than that of a conventional stethoscope, with better amplification enabling examination through clothing or surgical dressing even in heavy persons.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.